Well they are when games properly support them. I've had an Index with the knuckles controllers for a couple of years and only a few games properly support the finger tracking.
Ironically the only single player games which had proper gesture responses I know of are Oculus games, which only support partial finger tracking. First Contact allows you to wave at the robot to get him to come out and play, and Asgard's Wrath let's you high five and thumbs up your AI helpers.
You don't need full finger tracking to do meaningful gestures. The light Brigade does a great praying gesture by bringing the controllers together.