I am in a country where people do not really pay much attention to sound. We do not have sound engineers or sound designers at all. Some companies even treat their "graphic artists" to be "multimedia guys", doing both sound and graphic. Sound is a very important aspect in games. Without sounds, there's no mood at all. I would like to open a discussion about factors and possiblities of what kind of game can be made in this case. I have seen some games such as Abuse, where they have no music at all. Shocking sound effects and the power of silence fit very well with horror games. IMO, there must be something more than this. The main point here is mood of the game.

Four-five years ago I played Quake 2 at my friend's home. He had a ripped version, without cinematics or music to lower the size. We didn't even think about lack of music, we finished the game and enjoyed it. Year later, I bought Quake2 (I think it was together with some game magazine, not sure). I thought the music doesn't fit to the game and turned it off completely. Thus I finished that game without music at all.

On the other hand, recently I have played Unreal. I cannot possibly imagine playing this game without music. Music set a great mystical mood which made you want to play more ;)

In my opinion, it's better to have no music rather than have unfitting music. But that's my opinion :)

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I thought the music doesn't fit to the game and turned it off completely.

Agree, although sound and music are two different things in my opinion, and they have different applications.

For example, if you play some kind of "Super Mario" style game, "music" just belongs to the feeling of it, and "sound" is just well... secondary. It's ok if "sound" is no more than "blib" and "bing", nobody really cares.

On the other hand, if you're crawling through the vampire lord's dungeon through the mist and through the shadow, background music just sucks (a lot of games do it nevertheless), but the right environment sounds are what decides whether it's really scary or not -- subtle effects, as some wooden creak or a gentle gust of wind at the right time.

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Original post by samoth Quote: I thought the music doesn't fit to the game and turned it off completely. Agree, although sound and music are two different things in my opinion, and they have different applications. For example, if you play some kind of "Super Mario" style game, "music" just belongs to the feeling of it, and "sound" is just well... secondary. It's ok if "sound" is no more than "blib" and "bing", nobody really cares. On the other hand, if you're crawling through the vampire lord's dungeon through the mist and through the shadow, background music just sucks (a lot of games do it nevertheless), but the right environment sounds are what decides whether it's really scary or not -- subtle effects, as some wooden creak or a gentle gust of wind at the right time.

Heh, that reminds me... every game has sewer levels, and the background music in each game feels like if it was copied from each other ;) always the same water splashes/pipes creaking :P

Anyway it depends on the game type. For example in FPS sounds are critical because they can tell you that you've been detected by enemies, also sounds tell you whether you hit the enemy or not (pain sounds). But in for example RTS, the sounds and music aren't critical to the gameplay and I often witness people turning sound and music completely off and playing some mp3s.

A game like an RPG definitely needs theme music. I remember the hair rising on the back of my neck the first time Frog took up the Masamune in Chrono Trigger. The sound and music in that game had a very powerful effect. Music in RPG's should typically be used like it is in movies.

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In my opinion, it's better to have no music rather than have unfitting music.

I agree, but you will need something to compensate in some cases. For instance, if you are making a Kirby like game. It's so joyful and childish. If you don't have music for that kind of game, well, it's no more "happy-go-go". It will be so quiet and lonely. It will be a completely different mood.

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A game like an RPG definitely needs theme music.

Although not completely agree, I do strongly agree with you. I can't imagine having a no music boss fight. Xenosaga episode 1 has shown that you can use ambient sound instead of music, but it's so lacking, IMO.

So if sound resources are scarce, what can we do to compensate for the missing mood of the game? If you say "create only horror games and the like", you are limiting yourself. It's true that without resources, one cannot create a product in mind. However, it opens more opportunity for creativity. If you are designing a platform game where there should be music, but you don't have access, what can you do? You need something to compensate for the mood.

I categorized some of game genre below:

- Flying Shooter : you definitely need music for this genre. I never see a Flying Shooter that works without music yet. Some designers actually synchronize the music with the stages to fit the mood perfectly. The nature of Flying Shooter allows music to be fit with the situation easily because you always move forward.

- Platformer : similar to Flying Shooter, but need more "generalized" music. I never see a Platformer that works without music yet.

- First Person Shooter : you don't really need music here because rifles and guns are our main leading melodies and cry of pain is our bass line.

- RTS : it proves that you may not need music in this category, but having a music here is definitely a plus.


Well, maybe I should say this. Why do we need music in a game? Because we need a mood for the current situation and/or location. Is it because of the situation, that's why we need music? One of the components that create a situation is story. However, being limited, one should consider something to compensate for music or else it's really lacking.

First Person Shooter games rely heavily on ambient sounds for having the player feel like he's really in there. But what will happen if we do this to other genre? It seems to me that you won't be able to escape this artificial limit if you use ambient sounds instead of music. You will be not be able to create Flying Shooters and Platformer in this case. Your game will also be fixed around certain type of mood only. There should be something that can break this; something that can compensate music. Something that can give out many kinds of mood just like music. Or is it just a chimerical dream?