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Comment by zapzupnz | Hacker News Reader

I can’t believe that in 50 years, you’ve been unable to imagine people disabling music. I turn it off in games like Minecraft because it serves no purpose, and my husband routinely disables it in Factorio. Then you’ve got people with hearing difficulties I would rather hear the sound effects as they help gameplay.

Truly, in 50 years, none of this has occurred to you or you’ve never witnessed it in friends or family? That seems hyperbolic

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That's not what JohnBooty was responding to, though. Turning off game music because it's not doing much for you or because you have other things you'd rather listen to is not at all unusual. Listing game music alongside poorly implemented features that get turned off by default before you even start playing the game is, yes!

I don't think it's unusual at all, depending on what genre of games they play. For example, they may be thinking of the likes of many PC strategy games where the music seems to just come in seemingly at random and distract, or completely ruin the ambience that the game world is trying to set.

I have a long rant responding to JohnBooty but ... what is it that game music is meant to do for me most of the time?

I understand that it helps some people get "into the flow" or something. But I don't have an issue with that. I occupy my mind trying to grasp the mechanics and be good at using them to play. If the gameplay doesn't have enough then papering over it with music doesn't do it for me.

And I'm not always looking for "intense" stuff. I like to chill out too. But I've played quite a few games over the years and so the gameplay has to have something to keep me entertained.

I enjoy music with Rocket League because I don't play competitive and so some music playing while I'm hanging out with others on my couch shooting-the-shit as it were is fine. It's more of a "social setting music" than "game music".

After all these years, I don't miss it at all.

    That seems hyperbolic

I think maybe you skimmed instead of reading. I'm referring to the parent poster's practice of turning music off ASAP on first boot as standard operating practice, because they find it to be part of what they consider "keyword bingo for usually poor implementations" Here's what they said:

    Every game I first start requires a trip to turn off music, 
    in-game VoIP, HDR, bloom, lensflare, screenshake if possible.
    It's like a keyword bingo for usually poor implementations

But as you suspected: yes! I can imagine turning off game music, in general. Thank you for believing in me!

I have turned the music off in many games.

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