Actually, in my opinion of course, video games aren't as fair as you're making them sound... or at least, not all of them are. Ask around about how many times people have lost a life because of hit detection that's not 100 percent perfect, or because of regenerating enemies that suddenly pop up and gun you down because you made the screen scroll back a little (piss off Ninja Gaiden). There are variables in games, especially "sand box" ones, that can result in any number of things happening... many of which mirror what would happen in life if you were to do them (like say... firing a rocket at a police car after gunning down five hookers and stealing a firetruck).
Life, similar to a game, is about meeting the challenges thrown at you. Some you'll make for yourself, while others will be forced upon you. Meet them, and you'll move forward. Fail at them, and you're going to have some problems. The main difference is, you can always reload a savestate if it's needed in a game. But in life, you have to go through the slow and sometimes painful process of getting back what was lost because of your mistakes and failures (respect, trust, love, friendship, money, etc.).
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And now that I think about it, life is really more fair than games in a way. In a game, you can always simply do over what you fucked up. You can't do that in life nearly as readily, making the idea of "reaping what you sew" (what many would consider fair) more in play. If you screw up, you pay the consequences. There's no reset button to hit, and no "do over". You deal with what happened, and move forward as best you can. But games let you break that rather well known saying with a simple button press, making things less fair, as it instantly gets you out of the trouble you caused, and the mistakes you made.
Keep in mind, this is just one small area. There are a metric fuckton of areas that can be discussed regarding what's more fair in a game and life, and the scores of variables that surround them. The "reap what you sew" concept was just one thing that came to me as I was typing after reading your post.