How Important is Music to Video Games?

Yesterday I was playing Heavy Rain and I said to myself: "Why not try this game without any music? How much difference would it make? " A big difference. Any of you who played that game would remember the really emotional moments. Well they weren't really emotional and it sort of ruined the experience of the game. And so I started testing out many other games too like Batman Arkham Asylum, Dead Space ... and I discovered that music is a really important detail in games. Not because of its nice tune and all, but because of the emotion it gives. Music actually makes you get into the game even more. And then I thought about how hard it is for music designers to design music, especially for a video game. In a movie or TV show, everything is put into place and the time for something to happen is precise, so music designers know when to add a sudden jolt to the song if the movie were a horror one for example. But in a video game, the gamer decides when something happens and music designers have to find a way to work around that, which they did a great job with. Some people don't appreciate the art of music in video games. What I suggest is playing through some of your games without music, like I did, and appreciating it!