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Non-Violent, Cooperative Games?
jandersen writes "While I generally don't play computer games, I do occasionally play games like Crossfire or The Mana World, because they have more of a story line and allow you to go at your own pace. What I don't care much about, though, is that they are still focused on killing monsters and amassing wealth, and it gets very tedious after a while. Are there really no games where the goal isn't so much about increasing your own power and defeating others, but where you instead grow by doing things that benefit others, where enemies shouldn't be killed out of hand, but befriended; where learning, teaching, research and social skills are more important than killing and conquering? Would people be interested in a game of that nature?"
That game was pretty much designed just for this scenario. Hell, as a hardcore gamer (logged nearly 1000 hours in FFXI) even I enjoyed it. Sequel's gonna be out in the US on the 16th, too.
Puzzle Pirates. Play puzzles to bilge, sail, build clothing, etc. It's a (vaguely) player driven economy with a mostly laid back group of people. And, of course, there is Viva Pinata.
I think the original poster's goals are unreachable with current technology and techniques. You can't befriend a game in any more substantive a fashion than you can befriend your television... lots of games have tried various ways of simulating human interactions, but humans are notoriously complex. Emotional simulation systems quickly break down into either simplistic grinding or laughable parodies of humanity. If you attempt to replace those computer entities with actual other online human beings... Let's just say that you can't rely upon other human beings in online games to act like human beings.
The closest thing to what the grandparent poster asked for is the sims. It's a good example of how simplified human interactions have to be made in order to work in a simulated environment.
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