I turn the music off on 100% of the games I play. This is true for many players. When I play games I listen to my own music in the background (my CD's that are on a playlist on my PC). So not having music in your game would save me an extra step - finding a way to turn it off.
I've always wondered about adding music - the ratio of people like me that turn it off vs the people who actually allow it to play. It would be an interesting statistic.
This is a very personal matter.
Personally, in 95% of games I turn off the music and turn on my tracks in a separate player. Perhaps this affects the immersion, but I like my own tracklist more than what the game creators offer.
Also, the same repeating melody can create a more negative impression than no music at all (hello, Stellar Blade).
Therefore, for me, music in games is more unnecessary than necessary.
I'd say 95% is a bit too high. Maybe 30 - 50% would be more realistic, and it heavily depends on the genre. If it's an immersive game like an RPG I never listen to my own music and don't turn it off, because it ruins the immersion.
And there are also people who will listen to the ingame muaic for the first 10-20 hrs of playtime, then turn it off. I do that for some genres like TD's and sandboxes.
But I think most players will just leave it on, and will notice the absence of music as a flaw (unless it's a conscious design decision, for example in a horror game).
If you can't afford a composer (or don't want to compose music yourself), try including some CC0 royalty free tracks, it might be better than nothing.
EDIT: fuck, just noticed the age of this thread. Who necroed it? 😁
That is not a good question. You set up a scenario where music is to be expected and then ask, if people would play/try it. They would. You do not hear the music or lack thereof on the advertisement page. But they might not like the game as much as they might have, if it would have had good music.
What you really should ask, if people would enjoy it more or less, based on having music or not. And if you have a genre where such sounds are the expected thing, of course, music is a must. People that do not like it, can turn it off. Other people would see it as unfinished. Might as well use stock assets for your hero or the bosses.
Know your audience. And in that genre, well, the music can have a huge impact.
In other genres, you can even get away with having no sound at all.
As a musician who is also a bit of a videogame soundtrack nerd (I would unironically listen to Jazz Jackrabbit in the car)... yes, I would still try the game. Some games are fine, or even better without music. I guess if I was playing and the whole time kept thinking to myself "I wish there was a soundtrack", then the game might feel unfinished.
I'd say that if you're leaving out the music then make sure the rest of the audio design does a good job of filling the space, as you probably should avoid complete silence most of the time. Music helps with that since even when nothing is happening in the game, there's some audio going. Just having some very ambient thing going on, that people argue if it even counts as music, will help to ensure that it's never completely silent. From a sound design perspective, complete silence is almost always a bad thing. It's especially jarring to your ears if you are on headphones and go from silence, to a somewhat loud sound, or vice versa. You may have experienced a "rumbling" in your ears if you've ever done this (listening to loud music and you suddenly pull out the cord), because our hearing is relative, and always trying to adjust to the overall volume. This is why in professional music production there's almost always some amount of sound throughout the song, even if it drops to very quiet it will never be completely silent (well, almost never).
Now despite being a music nerd who will listen to the OST even when it's kinda bad, I have also had some experiences where I enjoyed no-music gaming. A great example would be Abuse... I always played this game without music! It actually does have a soundtrack but I either couldn't get it to work or had a version where it was missing. Now when I look at gameplay videos where the music is working, it just sounds cheesy to me. To me this game is actually better without the music because the sound design together with the grungy visuals creates the perfect atmosphere. Of course I'm biased since I always played it without music and therefore when I hear the music my brain is like, what? Anyway my point is, you should feel free to not include bumpin' tracks in your game if that's going to achieve the atmosphere that you want.
Why an additional button? In my games you simply move the volume slider to 0. Additionally (because I e.g. play actual baroque music in my "Building Baroque" game) I have button to display the title of the piece that's currently playing. BTW: There is a lot of public domain classical music if that would be something for your game.
If you have a mute button, you can have a remembered audio level. Turning sound on again will reset to that level, instead of the user trying yet again to find the right setting. 100% is not always right.
People that do change their audio settings will also be the ones that will expect a certain quality of life here. It is basic UI design, or it should be, along with a lot of other things, that new developers seem to forget when making a game. Same for engines. You seem to use Unity. Why is this not an out of the box standard feature?
