Posted 06/19/2026
In Super Mario Bros., what is probably the template for every big name video game after it, has you stompin' turts and other bad guys to race to the end of each level and save the princess. (Perchance.) You have Mario commit several dozen war crimes in order to eventually take down the villain. Boom, there's the essence of every blockbuster video game to follow.
The same goes for Sonic, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Dragon Quest, Call of Duty, Half-Life, etc. etc. etc. ............ etc.
But every now and then, a quaint little video game comes along and asks the question: can there be an interesting video game that doesn't focus on conflict? On fighting or violence?
If you've read any of my other posts and know about my affinity for Undertale and Deltarune, those are some good recent examples that come to mind, games that question the status quo of needing conflict front and center in order to keep the player engaged and tell a meaningful story. Others have come before Undertale, such as Moon, Gone Home, maybe lots of puzzle and racing games, but you'll find the list of games that don't have some fighting front and center dries up real quick.
You may wonder why that is, but if you think about the initial question for a second, the answer becomes clear. Stories have conflict. And people like big stories with lots of action and drama. Put the two together, and you get video games about fighting your way from point A to point B.
But video games are an interesting medium that has to consider the question of interactivity - what does the player do for the however many hours they spend playing this game? Running? Jumping? Swinging swords? Shooting stuff? Talking?
Talking... now that's more of the speed of a story that doesn't need a bunch of combat. Compared to every other medium of art - music, books, movies/shows - video games have an awkward relationship with talking. Talk too much, and your game becomes a visual novel or string of cutscenes - something that, depending on a variety of factors, really should be told through song or image, without the added interactive part. Talk too little and your game crosses into dangerous territory today of being like "those boring old arcade games that don't have any story" or whatever.
Think of some of your favorite TV shows or books. Some people really like comedies and slice of life type shows, and these kinds of stories are woefully under-represented in video games, as far as I know. Or at least they're under-represented in major releases, I'm sure there are indie games out there that cater to people looking for these things in video game form. But really, how the hell do you adapt "Lucky Star" into a video game, a bunch of kids sitting around talking about random school and life stuff? Feels like the only feasible answer is a visual novel, which, if done poorly, ends up just being a cheap adaptation of what really should remain as a show.
So, video games are in a really tricky spot. It feels like there are some stories that video games aren't well suited to tell. Such an idea may make someone want to relegate video games back into the "not-potentially-art" bin, but other mediums also suffer from various weaknesses.
Sure, you CAN write a book about the beauty of national parks, but nine times out of ten I'd rather see all of that for myself or watch a video documentary about that. Sure you CAN make a movie that focuses on the inner life of a person and how that affects the person and things around them, but being able to read every little detail that's going through someone's head in one second of time is much better than listening to that same second stretched out to an awkward minute of monologue in a movie. And the general public apparently doesn't value story telling in music as much as they do in television shows (but on this front the general public is gravely mistaken - I would KILL to hear something like Beowulf performed live in epic song format).
Games can try and work around the need to engage players in some kind of "combat" (whether literal or otherwise) that represents conflict in their stories, but it seems like they're in a bit of a pickle. Have too little engaging gameplay or go too abstract, and you may stray too far away from the premise of what's actually going on in the story. Have too much combat or fighting, even with a story or characters that don't support that, and you end up being Call of Duty 20 even when that's not called for.
People are creative though, and I'm sure there are developers out there cooking up solutions to keep the interactivity portion of games interesting even without devolving into the next fight night. There are probably some games out there right now that walk this line really well, of having interesting stories that don't revolve entirely around fighting. If you happen to know about them, I'd love to play them and learn more about this dynamic in the medium. Let me know in the comments section below and remember to like comment and subscribble.
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