What drives developers to not allow controlling music volume for the game?

Two games in a row I've played for Xbox One which didn't have an option for controlling the volume of the music in the game. Instead, there's just a single slider for "Master volume". Personally, the first thing I do is turn down the music volume because I hate being distracted by annoying pumped-up music throughout the game.
Sometimes the music is so loud one can barely hear the dialogue.

Why would developers not include this option?

 

There's a chance it's just a simple oversight. Big production games have a lot of moving parts, and things can fall through the cracks when there's confusion as to whose responsibility something is.

The other possibility is that it was just at the bottom of the priority list and didn't make the budget or time constraint limit. Even the smallest feature has a cost you have to factor in when you look at design, coding, testing... While I also like to turn the music volume down just a bit so that it's lower than voice/effects, in the grand scheme of things it's such a minor thing that I would expect that to be super low priority.

 

The third option is that they also F***ed up on implementing audio, and it's too late to separate music, SFX, and VO from each other to create individual setting.

 

Yes, this definitely just changes the volume of the music and not the entire game.

 

Wrong! It only changes the volume of Russian enemy voices.

 

I never really thought of it. Generally the makers spend a lot of time adjusting the music volume so its just right to go with the special effects.

Like if you go and see a Tarantino movie do you say "Well it was a good film but it would be better if I was able to adjust the volume of the music." Probably not, you trust the directors vision.

Another thing is sometimes you want your game to be simple and not have a million sliders and options to control. Other times people like all that control.

To be sexist, if you are designing a game for boys, have it with loads of sliders and options and buttons that they can figure out and master. And don't label anything because then its more of a sense of achievement!

 

Because if all of it ain't turned up to 11 it ain't worth it woooo..!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven

 

Actually, I would pay good money to have seperate volume controls for sfx, music and dialogue on my TV.

In dialogue heavy games I normally just turn on subtitles. It's not the best solution, but it works.

 

I normally turn down music / effect volume a notch or two so I can listen to speeches better. I need that because I'm not that good with English, and sometimes it feels a bit difficult for me to concentrate on dialogues and gameplay at the same time.

I bet there are other non-English speakers who have a similar problem as mine, so I wish all games come up with separate volume controls to make speeches relatively louder.

 

I usually wait until it gets irritating, which it almost always does. I like to give it a chance though because sometimes I get lucky and find the music to be a perfect addition to the game. An example is the entire gta series. I have to turn it down in the mix a bit but I like it being there. Get in a car the radio is playing some random station and its either a song I already know, good comedy talk radio, or a comedic advertisement spoof. Gta 3 did get repetitive because I played it for longer than I should have I will admit.

I am in agreement with Kiwasi here. It is a problem I have noticed grow worse with more advanced sound systems and home theater becoming more common. The dynamic range of movies has been on the rise in consumer recordings or it seems like it anyway. The dialog will range from a whisper being barely audible to a shout being pretty loud but when a bomb or gunshot goes off the windows shake. The music is mixed quite loud also because of course you want the theme song to be the loudest part right next to the THX splashscreen. Thats not actually a fault or a bad thing. It's correct and should be just like that and its this way in a full size theater. I just dont always want it. Sometimes my kids asleep. Sometimes it's still early am and everyones asleep and I wish it was just a 4 inch paper cone with the audio compressed to the point a clap and a gunshot sound the same.

 

You don't even have to be non English speaking. Give me a mildly difficult day, and by the end of it I'll struggle to seperate dialogue from background noise.

 

I assume it's just not a priority for a lot of devs. Personally, I like to have the options available. There are a lot of games where I like to turn down most of the sound and throw a podcast on for a while.

I would kill for a way to separate volume controls for movies these days. It the director's vision is to have music and sound effects six times louder than the dialogue, then screw the director.

 

I would almost always set Dialogue 100%, SFX 100%, Music 70-80% + Subtitles. More so if it's a dialogue heavy game.

 

We just had this thread in Game Design if I remember correctly, and yes, it's still a bad idea to limit player choice in this area.

You don't even have to be tired/exhausted! In most games I turn down the music and SFX just a notch so the dialog is clear (I like to avoid subtitles if I can, because it causes me to read the bottom of the screen rather than focus on the scene).

 

No - it is becoming more common as @FrankenCreations perfectly described. Dialogue is low, so we turn up the volume and then when an explosion happens the windows rattle at my neighbors house! It seems at least half of the summer blockbusters (which are usually inferior to the winter late releases anyway) the past couple years have this desire to overlay orchestral ballads on top of important dialogue plot points just as the camera cuts away so nobody can read their lips to understand what they are saying. Pretty annoying to be honest.

Agree

Your not alone - and I know no other language other than my native English.

I prefer to turn down background music pretty soon after the tracks have played through. I feel it enhances the action sound FX. Last game I remember really enjoying the game even more after I turned off the music was Shadow of Mordor.

Nearly the same though that thread was about audio sliders in mobile games.

 

The issue is that it's going to balance differently on every different speaker configuration, and on top of that people potentially hear things differently. In an ideal world where everyone has similar equipment and great ears, sure, lets have an expert balance things so that everyone gets a perfect experience. Until we reach that ideal world, adjustable volume is a good help.

 

It is done intentionally just to annoy you and others.

 

I'm pretty sure it's all to do with different configurations of hardware. Watch the same blockbuster at the movies, and the audio will be crystal clear and well balanced. Watch it at home and it's all out of wack.

 

Practically every game is awful on some subset of speakers. Music drowns out dialog thanks to different bass/treble on different sound systems. Sometimes the designers just have S*** taste in music, and you want to switch it off.

There's no excuse for not letting us control it individually; there's almost no work needed to add one extra slider bar, and any game engine worth a damn has enough granular control over sound to allow 2+ volume sliders. Preferably it should be master, music, FX, ambience and dialog.

 

m-muh atmospheric experience

I can't be the only one that puts music volume to 0 first thing when I install the game, right?

 

I'm not so sure. I saw Star Wars VII at the cinema, and it had the same range issues as I get with watching movies at home, only the cinema made everything louder.

 

My problem with sound balance at home is that I can't hear the dialogue and sound effects wake up the whole village.

 

95% of the time I play in the living room while the wife watches something on TV. Which means I'm often so used to playing without any sound that turning the sound on when I'm alone degrades the experience.

 

I don't turn it off entirely, because I want to hear the music at least once. But I set it to anything from 50-90%, and sometimes it feels like the scale isn't linear. I.e. 50% down isn't half as loud, but instead using a dB scale.

 

Speakers?

Have you guys heard of headphones?
Go buy some over ear Sennheisers and start experiencing audio properly.

Speakers = comparative loss of 3D audio
Speakers = comparative loss of detail and depth as the audio muddies as it bounces around the room
Speakers = Having to worry about not disturbing other people when you want to turn the volume up

Even just listening to regular music is much better on headphones, never mind games.
And you can pump it to ear bleeding levels and the neighbours won't hear anything.

 

Yes, but what good are my Sennheisers when the dialog is drowned out by music?

Besides, my neighbours are practically deaf and don't notice all the explosions. Or in the games I play.

 

In a way you are right the abundance of subwoofers and major sound systems does play its part but I dont think thats all there is to it. I think it a choice made to increase dynamic range because more home hardware supports it now. I have an old crt tv in my bedroom with internal 2 inch speakers and a projector in my living room with a pretty large sound system and a pair of 10 inch subs. Some movies are more dynamic than others. Older movies tend to be less dynamic as a whole. The same movie on blu ray and dvd will be mixed different. A vhs.....yes i still have and occasionally watch them.....is almost never mixed with the range of a dvd. This is also true for cassette tapes vs cd audio for music. I can watch one of the overly dynamic movies in my room on the ancient hardware and still have the same effect where dialog is super quiet and explosions distort the poor tiny speakers. I can watch an ancient dvd in the living room and although the explosion shakes things a bit when someone speaks its loud and clear because the difference between quiet and loud isnt as far. Avatar is a good example of the difference in dynamic range between dvd and blu ray. My wife always buys the combo with both disks. Not long ago my ps4 failed mid movie and we switched to the dvd. It was a complete different experience. I think hardware plays a role but more of an indirect one. The audio engineers expect more big sound systems and mix accordingly.

As far as every set of speakers sounding different there is alot of truth to that. Even the majority of people with fairly large sound systems do not have them tuned properly. The size and shape of a room means as much as how big your speakers are. A perfectly calibrated system will not sount the same if you move it. Some of the new fancy systems come with a little microphone to listen and auto adjust your invisible equalizer but even those fall short in properly calibrating your system for the most part. The extreme high end such as some of the Bose lineup will do a good job at it but even then its not perfect. As an audiophile I have become good at calibrating sound instead of just turning the bass up but generally people dont know how or have the right equipment. A recording studio is a special place all its own. They are so deadly quiet inside the reference room that you can feel it like one of those anechoic chambers they put you in for a hearing test. Your home is never this good. Your goal at home should be to have your system produce each frequency in its range at the same decibel level. You wont be able to cure all of your echos or standing wave problems and there will be one point in the room that sounds the best but you can at least get close to what the audio engineers heard in terms of which frequency is loudest.

 

Uncomfortable.

 

Especially when watching with the entire family.

 

Over ear sennheisers? No they aren't at all. They cup over your ears.
I literally wear them for many hours every day because I don't even own speakers and I'm always on my PC after work.
Worn them for like 10 hours almost non stop, no discomfort.
Often I'll notice I am wearing them and I haven't even been listening to audio for the last hour. That's how not uncomfortable they are lol
ON ear and IN ear headphones are uncomfortable as all hell though.

 

Stop telling me how to feel. I can't stand having anything slung over my head.

 

Then "enjoy" substandard audio and music.
The end.

Also, stop telling everyone else how to feel.
Just because you have some thing where you freak out when stuff is on your head lol
Most people don't. I see loads of people even walking around with IN ear and ON ear headphones, they are even willing to put up with those.

 

Seems to me like they'll enjoy not having something stuck to their head.

I'm with you that headphones give better audio quality far more efficiently, but that's not always the only concern.

 

I have to think though, it depends on the game. I mean, films don't have sliders for music, fx, dialogue etc. You get the master volume and that is all.

Perhaps the real problem is production values?

 

Am I telling you what is comfortable to you?

 

Can u feel it in your chest when an explosion happens. Nope. Headphones can have a clearer representation of audio signal but they always lack in raw power.

 

I was primarily making sure yourself and others understand the massive difference between OVER ear and other styled headphones regarding comfort levels.

You said headphones are uncomfortable. You didn't say that was a subjective opinion, but that's obviously what it is, it didn't need to be said.
I then said OVER ear headphones are not uncomfortable. I didn't say that was a subjective opinion either, but that's obviously what it is.

Then you accused me of trying to make an absolutist statement, even though I'm just asserting my opinion exactly like you did.
Well then, I'll just accuse you of making an absolutist statement, even though we both know that these are subjective statements.

 

But should we really have a slider for everything? Isn't that an OCD thing? (Not being able to take things for what they are, becoming obsessed about 1 thing only because we can't change it)

Skyrim has a slider for difficulty, which is basically just a cheat slider in my eyes. GTA has slider for pedestrian population. We have sliders for how far you can see grass, clouds, reflections ... mouse X and Y axis sensitivity ... separately! ... and for brightness, gamma, alpha, beta and soon omega as well.

I'm not saying customization is bad ... but where do we draw the line of what should a standard? and collectively force every game to have it?

 

Except speaker is best girl and you are objectivelly wrong.

 

Even a basic set of coax monitors are far more accurate than any headphone set you can buy, you don't walk into a professional studio and see there isn't even a set of nearfields.

 

Studio monitors are extremely accurate and the amps that drive them are as well. The price reflects this.

 

Then I guess headphones must be an afterthought for sound engineers when they are mixing and mastering a track in a professional studio?
Except that I'm quite sure that they aren't though. Headphones are the bulk of that process from what I've seen, when I was recording at one. And that's in a space specifically designed for absorbing sound where headphones lose a lot of the advantage that they have in the real world.

 

I mean, it's Final Fantasy. What do you expect?

As long as it's not particularly difficult to put in, yes we should. At least for PC games.

Edit: the headphones vs. speakers debate is entirely tangential to the focus of this thread, which is individual audio sliders. My fancy over-ear Bose headphones don't mean jack as far as that is concerned. That said, who exactly is using monitors when recording audio? That sounds like a recipe for absolute disaster...

 

Headphones have their place and no recording studio is complete without a set of cans. The headphones used in the recording industry are far from what consumers use. With the cash it would take to buy 10 pair so my entire home theater audience can use them I can put together a rig that physically hurts at high output levels.

 

I've been doing music / sound engineering for about 20 years (did a split degree with computer science), been into many major European studios and I tell you know if an engineer was using headphones for the bulk of the process I'd be walking straight back out the door.

I use Senny HD 650's or Focal spirits for reference, as you do when you're mastering a track but they should only be used as a reference amongst many.. Like Yamaha NS10's and avantone mixcubes are used for various references like mono image strength and multiple audio device checks.. Hell you should even check on a pair of cheap iphone earbuds, but the bulk of the work should always be done on monitors.

Reason being physics, bass etc. etc. it's like sound engineering 101 (the shear basics).

 

As it happens, adding a slider to every single possible thing can become cumbersome.

Hence not all games have sliders to meet every single expectation.

 

Well sure, which is why I made that statement. But a total noob like myself made sliders for music and sound effects and dialog just fine. This is not a situation where it's difficult.

 

At least not in Unity. The mixer added in 5.x makes it easy, even fun.