Gaming and Music: Can Music in Video Games Enhance the Players’ Performance?
Gaming has become a very popular pass time in the past few decades. There are many different types of gamers, from completionists to casual gamers, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, we can all agree on one thing, music is a key part of gaming. While music will not likely make or break a game, good music can keep players hooked. But does music actually impact the players’ performance?
Whether or not music actually has an impact on gamers performance yields mixed results in the research that was conducted. In some cases, music and sound effects seemed to greatly improve the performance of the gamer. In other cases, the presence of music resulted in worse gameplay (than when music was absent). It is worth noting in the compared research the games were both different types, so the difference may be due to more than just the absence or presence of music. Additionally, the type of music (and whether or not the music itself is disruptive) may have a large impact on how a gamer will perform. One thing to also consider when conducting further research on how music impacts gamers is the purpose of the music to the game. Is it there to add enjoyment, create immersion, provide emotional cues, etc.?
Other elements to examine are types of games, type of music, and the individuals playing the game. With a large, enough pool of participants individuals’ participants may not matter too much, but if too many of the participants are really good or really bad at gaming then there is a chance that the data could be skewed. One way to deal with this is to remove extreme outliers from your data. Good music really does make the gaming experience more enjoyable and memorable, provide it’s not too distracting.