How important do you believ music to be. For me it is one of the most important elements in a game, but are you happy for games to focus on other areas instaed of music. Your thoughts please?

Music is a MUST HAVE for me, custom sound-tracks are all fine and dandy for some games, but I believe the creators of the game should know the sound and mood they are trying to portray, I look at video games as a way to play through a world someone is trying to show me, and music is a very important factor of that.

For me, music is more important than graphics. Music can really give a mood to the game that graphics can't. Music like's Galaxy's, Ocarina of Time's, Silent Hill 2's... pure awesomeness. Honorable mention to games that feature soundtracks by rock bands, is not the same, but fits well in sports games and such.

i think it is pretty important but not the most important

It's really important to me because a great soundtrack can push a game over the top.

What would Halo be without that wonderful score to add atmosphere to important parts of the game?

What would Zelda be without the main theme (though Big N doesn't use it much anymore, the bastards)?

I don't even have to mention the Mario theme.

BioShock, Silent Hill, and many of the most successful "adult-oriented" games use music to engage the player and heighten the mood. Without that music, it's a lot harder to achieve an epic feeling in-game (probably stemming from our love of film and John Williams over the past 30 years). Gamers have come to expect the score to match the experience, foreshadow events, etc.

The in-game music is 100% integral to the gaming experience for me. Many games I've played wouldn't have been as good of an experience as they were had the soundtrack not been up to par to accentuate the gameplay and just give certain scenes the appropriate context needed.  In short, game music composition is extremely important, one of the more important elements of a game in my opinion.

I'm a huge fan of game music. So much so that I often wanna know who's scoring the game before I wanna know who's directing/producing it.

it depends what kind of game, for a RPG it's very important.

Just try to think about:

Mario without music
Zelda without music
Castlevania without music
Megaman without music

Its not even possible to to imagine the concepts without music.

incredibly important
Metroid Prime 1 & 3 (2 is suited well to the the game, but plain freaky)
MGS 1, 2 & 3
Super Metroid
Silent Hill
all the Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess
REmake, RE2, RE4
FF7 & 10..............
oh damn the list goes on and on and on............
all have good (if not great) soundtracks, it is quite an important element.

music or just sound?
sound : extra element VERY important
music : also extra element but imo bit less important