Alternatives to competitive Design

Since the first pixels left their hard drives set on a wonderous journey to explore the deep recess of imagination they were of course confronted by lasor fire seconds after creation and sent back to the hard drive they were formed in.  This has been the standard for video games for the last 50 years or so.  In fact the first interactive game had you shooting missiles.  So why are we always intent on killing each other in video games, which are by all means, an equivalent to literature?  It seems that the only thing games have really done in the past  is put the player in a world, give him/her a stick and tell them to go forth and conquer.  It's a shame since games seem to have great potential because of their interactive elements.  Elements that could potentially be used to create a player driven story deriving character traits from the player themselves.  This has been done to some extent in games like Mass Effect but then they just send you and your gun on your way.  A few games have given the player a non-violent alternative but still follow a liniar plotline.  So what gives?  Why the violent nature in our vast repiture of games considering the source, boardgames, are so subjective and non-violent?

But a few games seem to be bucking this trend with new story driven elements.  In these games the player may be given an image.  Something subjective that the player assigns meaning to.  At this point the game is no longer pass fail and becomes more about the expeirence.  Since a persons view of things can't really be called better or worst than the competitive nature of games is gone and a more opinion based veiw takes its place.  This view is common in most modern entertainment (save sports which has a purely pass fail attitude [fan opinions aside]) and gives the audience a magic circle.  Of course sports have a magic circle, ball goes in net, team scores point.  But beyond believing that a ball going into a net has any subsequent value the magic circle is limited to the rules of the game.  Imagery games take the opposite perspective by taking away the competitive nature.  They let the player make their own story about events.  This gives way to alternating opinions about events and can be resonably assumed that this subjective view changes based on each persons perspective.  By any sence these games are a form of art as well as function.  

So imagery based games are more based in art.  A few games have challenged preconceptions about imagery based progression.  Like the ones listed above but one game has taken this tecnique to a more practical level.  In the past imagrey has been used to enhance the impact of the story.  One example was Modern Warefare 2's use of imagery (SPOILERS) when the characters ghost and roach were burned alive.  This image became more powerful by taking control away from the player (rarely done in this game) and presented them with a powerful image of those two characters being burned alive.  The player losses nothing in this but is affected by the image.  A scenceless addition to mechanics but without this scene the game would have lost impact.  MoW2's success was not the result of this scene but it does prove that even mainstream games are taking this practice into consideration.  Other games are starting to join in by making imagery the soul of their gameplay, Half Life 2 mod 'Handle with care' for instance.  This game has the player confront their characters phycological issues by confronting them with images contained in fragile box.  The player then assigns meaning to these images and the story unfolds.  Games are starting to rely less on objectives pushed by mechanics and more on players perception of events to tell the story.  This more modern day progression means that complexity in story is now being derived from more than just mechanics.  Modern day imagery seems to be another interactive story progression tool that appears here to stay.