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

They're violent in the same way as hitting a tennis ball is violent, or Care Bears hitting people with their chest beams to make them care, or not really at all. I can see the argument for Pokemon with some of the bite moves and such, but it is done in such a puffy and ungratuitous way that it is extremely mild-cartoon violence at best. Violence is definitely far from what the game is about.

When people talk about violent games, they mean shooting people, stabbing them with daggers or swords, or blowing them up with rpgs.In addition,  punching them, kicking them, or ramming chains through their skulls. Blood, guts, and gore.

I definitely see your point but what I'm looking for specifically (which I realise should have been more clarified in the topic) are games that doesn't rely on fighting as a mechanic at all. Non-violent was probably the wrong wording for it since I agree that Mario and Pokémon aren't really violent by any stretch of the imagination (well, Pokémon has the potential to be violent).

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.

They dont make the majority of games, but there are.The Witness, Zero escape, Professor Layton, Outlast, etc are ones that dosent have combat and have been very sucessful.But yeah, games that have combat steals the attention because people simply prefer games that way.

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 ;)

Don't know if this has been said already, but Portal 1 and 2 count I think.

With the exception of the ending boss fights.

Portal is a good example of a game that takes fps mechanics and doesn't make it typical fps. The mechanic is mainly for solving puzzles but then occasionally it has to be used to "kill", I'd say that still fits in. Hm, maybe I can give Mario a pass after all since the jumping is mainly for platforming and not specifically killing goombas... Hehe, I should've set up real guidelines for what passes :P

The Last Guardian. I know people say there's combat but there really isn't. ICO technically didn't have it either, even in the game's only boss fight the only act of violence you commit happens in the cutscene after it's finished. Of course there's the mandatory scene before going up that's ambiguous as to what exactly happens but that's another discussion

I was reluctant to mention The Last Guardian since it's not out yet but from what I've seen it would fit in ;)
ICO did have fighting though, didn't it? You fought the shadow things? Didn't play the entire game so I can't say for sure :P