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Raviel on 30 September 2016
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Barkley said:
Raviel said:

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.

Of course, I don't think that games without combat/violence are automatically good and you are definitely correct about fighting being a primal thing for us. I love violent games and games with tight fighting mechanics.

Those sort of systems doesn't have to go away to make a non-violent/non-combat game. Think of a hack'n slash that isn't about hacking and slashing. It could be focused on music instead of slashing up a an opponent. Play the right tunes and the opponent will just change its mood perhaps and that would count towards the (kill) count. The game can simply keep the systems (combos, criticals, chains) but rely on music instead of swords. Just an example, it doesn't have to be hard.

I understand your point though, for some non-violent things to work it has to be more complicated than "Drain the health bar by hitting it" but that's why it's woth having a discussion about it ;)