[vacri]

There are plenty of games out there that aren't fixated on combat and violence. Strategy games like the Civ series or EU IV have very abstracted combat, and are better described as conflict or competition (combat isn't core gameplay). Strategy games like Spacechem have nil violence. Then there are endless builder games like minecraft, where combat very much takes a back seat, and you can avoid it if you like. There are lots of platformers with no combat - 'running' games, where you avoid obstacles (a category the game in the article falls into). Three are more than a few horror games where you have no combat ability, like Slenderman. There's investigative or story games that have little or no combat in them, like say LA Noir, or most point-n-click adventures. There's also unusual games like Rocksmith where you plug your guitar into the PC. Just now, I've been playing Waking Mars, a game that is basically a gardening sim (oh, and there's gardening sims like Farmville). Then there are the sports and other sims - Steam just had a sale on a 'car mechanic simulator', and I'm not really sure it's reasonable to call things like NBA 2014 a 'combat-based' game. Driving and flying sims are also popular, and the queen of sims is the 'generic human sim' Sims 3, which is combatless. Then there's logic games like Tetris or 2048.

If you think that the idea of a game without violence is worth noting, then you're really not bothering to look at what games are out there.