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Barkley on 30 September 2016
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Raviel said:
Barkley said:

Well if you include mario in the violence category then I'll amend my response.

Enemies are required for action and challenge, without enemies Mario would be incredibly boring. Now you could change the enemies such as goomba's and koopa's to unliving obstacles, such as cannonballs and other things moving across the screen, however this removes a large amount of design, aesthetic and character from the game. It's difficult to make a game without living enemies that doesn't feel completely soulless and uninspired.

You need enemies for challenge and you need those enemies to be living for them to be interesting, memorable, impactful and have character.

I see where you're coming from, but I'm thinking that enemies and obstacles can be won over through other means than fighting. I recognize that all media rely on fighting to some degree to tell their stories. To overcome an obstacle but how many games use other systems in order to the same thing? It can still be a system in order to "fight" for your cause but it doesn't have to involve physical fighting. For example a group at my school a few years ago made a space shooter where you were "shooting" words on enemies to make them see things from your point of view and become friends with you.

In Mario's case the jumping on goombas is fine, I'm not trashing on games that has fighting mechanics in them I'm just trying to see the games that doesn't require fighting at all and see what place they hold in the market. I hope that made som sort of sense :P

Fighting is something that is very Primal, Visceral and Responsive. Creating an interesting, fun, succesful, accessible and moderately widely appealing game that doesn't rely on any form of violence to overcome is an extremely difficult thing, that just simply isn't worth the time, because as to answer the thread title, their is no demand for completely non-violent games.

The main reason to create a family friendly game is to make a game that is accessible to people of all ages and widely accepted as suitable for general family entertainment. Mario would be included in this section. As the market distinction between violent and family friendly is simply a persons subjective personal views then demand for non-violent games would only stem from someone having the view that Mario is not family friendly entertainment. As it seems unlikely anyone has an issue with the content in Super Mario it also shows that their is no demand for a non-violent game.

non-violent games can ofcourse be succesful, but they are not succesful simply because they feature no violence of any kind. If Animal Crossing added moles you had to bash with a hammer it would not affect it's popularity.