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[XRA]

Limbo has the most immersive music of all games I've played.  

[TheLastBanana]

No need to be wiseass.

Controls are there to make the game available in first place.

I don't think he's being a wiseass - he makes a good point. You've said a few times now that music completely and totally destroys immersion for you, and he's asking whether other elements that frequently appear in games do the same. In theory, you could remove all of those things and replace them with something more "realistic" for the sake of a "serious" game, but the question is whether that really improves the game, or simply makes it a jarring experience. As a few people mentioned regarding background music, it works contrary to your average player's expectations, and that may actually cause some people to be less immersed in the game. That has nothing to do with the controls, but rather how they're represented in the game.

If, for instance, you had to fish through a bag in order to get items, or needed to check gauges on your equipment in order to see how much health you have left, it would certainly be more true to life. I don't know if that would really make the game more enjoyable or immersive, though. I think most people would find it repetitive and tedious, and they'd be more focused on that than the game itself. Of course, those are things you would need to actively do in the game, while music is passive, so maybe it isn't the best comparison. Still, the point here is that there are certain things we expect to see or hear in games, and when they aren't there (or just work differently), it makes it difficult to identify with it. This applies just as much to background music as it does to tooltips, and this is where the other side of the argument is coming from: having the music come from physical sources in the game can be more immersive because it's more plausible, but can also be less immersive because there is often an expectation for there to be background music. It seems to me, from the clear split in opinion in this thread, that this ultimately falls down to personal taste more than anything. You bring up a good point, though, that music doesn't always need to be present for a game to be enjoyable.

Perhaps the topic's title could be rephrased to make it more clear what we're discussing. I think a lot of people are taking offence at the fact that a) you didn't really define a "serious" game, so people are interpreting that differently, and b) that the title makes it look like you're saying that "serious games" shouldn't have music at all. Reading your posts, it's clear that you don't mean that, but the way it's stated in the title is a bit misleading.

[1982]

No need to be wiseass.

Controls are there to make the game available in first place.

I don't think he's being a wiseass - he makes a good point. You've said a few times now that music completely and totally destroys immersion for you, and he's asking whether other elements that frequently appear in games do the same. In theory, you could remove all of those things and replace them with something more "realistic" for the sake of a "serious" game, but the question is whether that really improves the game, or simply makes it a jarring experience. As a few people mentioned regarding background music, it works contrary to your average player's expectations, and that may actually cause some people to be less immersed in the game. That has nothing to do with the controls, but rather how they're represented in the game.

If, for instance, you had to fish through a bag in order to get items, or needed to check gauges on your equipment in order to see how much health you have left, it would certainly be more true to life. I don't know if that would really make the game more enjoyable or immersive, though. I think most people would find it repetitive and tedious, and they'd be more focused on that than the game itself. Of course, those are things you would need to actively do in the game, while music is passive, so maybe it isn't the best comparison. Still, the point here is that there are certain things we expect to see or hear in games, and when they aren't there (or just work differently), it makes it difficult to identify with it. This applies just as much to background music as it does to tooltips, and this is where the other side of the argument is coming from: having the music come from physical sources in the game can be more immersive because it's more plausible, but can also be less immersive because there is often an expectation for there to be background music. It seems to me, from the clear split in opinion in this thread, that this ultimately falls down to personal taste more than anything. You bring up a good point, though, that music doesn't always need to be present for a game to be enjoyable.

Perhaps the topic's title could be rephrased to make it more clear what we're discussing. I think a lot of people are taking offence at the fact that a) you didn't really define a "serious" game, so people are interpreting that differently, and b) that the title makes it look like you're saying that "serious games" shouldn't have music at all. Reading your posts, it's clear that you don't mean that, but the way it's stated in the title is a bit misleading.

Actually, I wouldn't mind for those more realistic ways of going through for e.g. personal inventory by digging your bag for items. As you said. But I've partly accepted that this sort of route is not yet accepted in gaming culture and I take these things as they are. Many times games are also so fast paced to make it even impossible for such features. Anyway, I still see these sort of functions as a control schematic allowing access to actual end game. It sort of element between player and game, which is independent. Never felt that they could affect in e.g. immersion any way. But I am sure they would make gaming experience even better if done some plausible way in relation to game environment. Penumbra Overture had quite good "interface". But best solution for this I've seen in obscure space game Noctis.

Title says serious games don't need background music. Background music is apart from source music or diegetic which usage I endorse. About seriousness, I've seen lots of discussion in this place coming eventually down to semantics, either because real misunderstanding or purposeful misleading. But if one reads this actually good discussion in this thread he quite well understands what we are talking here about. Actually I defined what I mean by serious games... umm.

[s0]

No HUD has ever broke the immersion for me and I find the trend towards eschewing HUDs in modern games pretty dum. How things like the screen turning black and white and the infamous "grape jelly" any more "realistic" than a health bar? They're more intrusive if anything.

[biomechanic]

The crosshair is there because in an FPS you don't hold a gun like you would in real world so instead of (realistic) visual and kinesthetic feedback you get a reticle in the middle of the screen.

The health bar is there because in the real life you can assess your physical state by whether you feel any pain, by whether you feel hot, cold, or just right, and a million other internal and external sensory inputs.

The state of the character is communicated to the player through certain abstractions.

That's also what background music does. It's not there for the character to hear, but for the player to know the character's mental and emotional state. But unlike with the pain and the physical effort of game characters, experiencing their internal thoughts and feelings by the player is often the intended result. That's the immersion.

During the gunfight the player may feel excited and pumped up, and if the same is true of the character (indicated by the music) then the player's experience is "validated" and enhanced.
Action music is just the most blatant example, but it can be used for other, more subtle, situations.

I guess you'll counter  that with the "music is a cheap way to evoke an emotion when the game can't do it by other means" argument, but does it really work like that? If you yourself feel action ready and the sad violins start playing out of a sudden, do you feel forced to cry? If you're just lazily and casually strolling around in the game and the action music starts to play, do you feel compelled to get excited?
I, personally, don't. But even if it breaks the immersion, I wouldn't blame the music alone - the real problem is the dissonance between the player's feelings and those of the character. If there was any previous immersion, it is likely that the two were in sync up to that point and then a design error or a glitch caused a wrong character emotion to play at a wrong time. That's not a reason to discard all BGM.

And as for diegetic music - it can be used to a great effect, as in STALKER (which also has normal BGM): the fire crackles, one guy tells a funny story and the other plays the guitar. It definitely adds flavour to the world, but the purpose is completely different. It's not a representation of character's emotions, but a sound effect.

@C.A. Sinclair
I was just pointing out a double standard.

[bart_the_13th]

HUD:

More of this:
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armyweapons/a/futurewarrior.htm

I believe it's possible(or maybe already implemented) to put health vitals, ammo count, mission objective, etc into the HUD. But still, there's no way they put a background music to be listened in the middle of battle.

[1982]

It's not there for the character to hear, but for the player to know the character's mental and emotional state. But unlike with the pain and the physical effort of game characters, experiencing their internal thoughts and feelings by the player is often the intended result. That's the immersion.

I think with this comment we are somewhere in very fundamental area of general gaming experience. See, when I play these "serious" games it is definitely always *me* as myself there going around. I never play the actual character which has been written in the game. This is probably the main reason for experiencing immersion clash with BGM. I feel what I feel, often it is not what designers have intended the character to feel. Those who play these games as some sort of role play way, I think they get something meaningful out of the BGM. Like you said.

So case closed, I am officially a mental.

[Core Xii]

Jeez, that was a long read.

I hate singing. I'm a composer myself and I think that if you need words on top of the music to explain what emotion it's supposed to evoke, you're a bad composer. This is so analogous to what the OP said I'm a little stumped.

Music transpires traditional sensory input. It's not a definitive language. It's not a type of input that exists in nature. It's a sequence of patterns of sound that makes you feel something that does not exist, or recall something that does by cultural association. To have no music just seems wrong, it's like being deprived of one of your senses. Like a game without image, or without sound. You might equally well argue that a truly masterfully made game doesn't need picture either - but that's not the point; The point is that music is as much part of the nonexistent experience we're seeking as the simulated virtual reality, designed characters or fantastic storyline.

When I played Half-Life as a kid, the music was off. Not intentionally, but in retrospect the cd-in wire from the disc drive might not have been plugged into the motherboard (well, there's a relevant trivia for the thread ). So I actually experienced HL without any crafted music, which certainly makes me think back in light of this thread. I do feel that some scenes in media feel too forced by the introduction of music that clashes with what I'm actually experiencing... But I'm not so convinced music as an art form is to blame so much as just bad design or composition. Most of Half-Life 2 (which I played through with the music on) seemed appropriate and immersive. Like the timing of silence in a joke, a subtle, skillfully included piece of music makes an experience that much richer.

I enjoyed the ambient wasteland tracks in Fallout 3 as much as the in-world radio. One of the Rayman games had music that the characters could hear, but didn't have a source; That was pretty interesting. Think, background music as normal, except in-world characters react to it (dance in this case) as if it was in-world, even when it clearly wasn't. I can't name any games or movies off the top of my head that didn't have music but I'm sure I've watched some. They're an appreciated reprieve from my usually musically saturated world, but I wouldn't go great lengths without any music at all.

The bottom line is a matter of taste. There's nothing more repulsive like some hollywood blockbuster movie that shoves sad music in your face in a sad scene, or a comedy with prerecorded laughs as if you lacked any sense of humor yourself and needed other people to signal you when to chuckle. But I also couldn't imagine games like Portal 2 and StarCraft 2 without their very impressive soundtracks that form images of science and space in my mind.

[Geeze]

Imagine if you're at war and you choose to hear music from your ipod in the middle of battle.

Metal Gear Solid 4

[charlestheoaf]

Every project will have it's own unique needs, and everyone involved will have their own input. The holistic experience at the end comes from the proper balance of all of the elements in the game; sometimes this may include background music, sometimes not.

I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a great example of ambient music put in place to establish a feel. It adds to the atmosphere, but no one track is "song-like" enough to stand on its own or distract from the environment. Many times, they do end up ditching the music entirely or simply playing tracks from in-game radios or other sources.

So, I guess my point is that "serious" or "immersive" games can be made many ways. If you were to just take STALKER and slap some heavy metal in any time there was a fire fight, then yes, that would be a poor way of handling the situation. But that is not the only type of "serious" game possible - we haven't even discovered all of the possibilities yet!

[C.D Buckmaster]

I agree that many serious games don't need music like that, but it can definitely help if the games want to add a surreal quality, like Braid.

Or maybe those games don't enter your definition of "serious" and I'm about to find myself in a *shudder* semantics argument.

[Chromanoid]

Imagine if you're at war and you choose to hear music from your ipod in the middle of battle.

http://jon.pieslak.com/asom/ is interesting in this regard. I didn't read the whole thread... I think music can compensate for the absence of some sensations that cannot be mediated via videogames at the moment.

[s0]

Or maybe those games don't enter your definition of "serious" and I'm about to find myself in a *shudder* semantics argument

you asked for it!  

"serious games" is actually a pretty well defined category that includes realistic simulations, educational games and games whose purpose is informing players about political/social/economic/environmental/etc issues (e.g. molleindustria's stuff).

but i think 1982's definition is a little different from that. what he means is games that aim at "total immersion." or that's what i'm getting from his posts at least.

[bart_the_13th]

Imagine if you're at war and you choose to hear music from your ipod in the middle of battle.

Metal Gear Solid 4

Yep, and snake was smoking with a cigarette during sniper battle too. In the reality, those thing can get you killed if done in a battlefield. Now I know that games are not reality, but some games just struggle to give the most realistic battle to their player.

http://jon.pieslak.com/asom/ is interesting in this regard. I didn't read the whole thread... I think music can compensate for the absence of some sensations that cannot be mediated via videogames at the moment.

I believe it's said "during deployment", not in the middle of battle. Yes, music during deployment can kill their boredom, and release their stress too. But music during firefight can just kill them.

I have to say that the 'serious' word give a lot of confusion since everyone, including me , got their own definition about 'serious' game.

[1982]

I have to say that the 'serious' word give a lot of confusion since everyone, including me , got their own definition about 'serious' game.

There are no right terms..., serious, total immersion, lifelike, virtual thematic reality, living plausibility. Semantics shitmantics.

[rivon]

Until VR exists, there will be no such games.

[1982]

Until VR exists, there will be no such games.

For me there are, try harder 

Here is VR for you:

[rivon]

Until you can feel and smell, it can't be TOTAL immersion.

[1982]

Until you can feel and smell, it can't be TOTAL immersion.

You are mixing up realism and immersion. Immersion is subjective feeling about an experience, realism is realism and can be pretty much measured.

[charlestheoaf]

I like think about about what people will think 50 years from now, looking back on our "realistic" games.

"What, these people just used a keyboard to maneuver a floating camera around the ground? And just wiggled their mouse to point the camera around? And there's just these two mannequin arms that are attached to the bottom of the viewport?"

"You can't even interact directly through your character? All you can do is hit physical buttons that correspond to an in-game item's function?"

Not to criticize these games, I can really get into something like STALKER. But I think that we are still far from realism in interactivity. Because of that, there are times when something additional (like music) can add to the player's sensory input. Sometimes this might help make up for other ways that our input/output systems are lacking.