How you like your computer games

[Rachael]

So this is one thing I am actually curious about.

I notice a lot of game devs (annoyingly) assume all players want to play fullscreen, and to mute sound and stop the game if you even hint at alt-tabbing away from the game. So I am curious what others think. Do you want all games to do this, or would you prefer for them to act as any other application on your system (i.e. a browser) and continue running as normal when you alt-tab away?

[Graf Zahl]

It depends. When playing and alt-tabbing away I'd like them to enter pause mode and stop making noise, but when debugging it's the opposite.

[KynikossDragonn]

I use a windowing system, I might as well have everything windowed!

For real though, the main reason why I've been reluctant to allow anything "fullscreen" is generally speaking when they lock up they take the whole system down with it, where as atleast in a window you have a chance to maybe see what you're doing.

Of course on Linux you can just switch to another TTY, or failing that, serial into the system and forcefully stop whatever that way.

[Nash]

When playing games, I like fullscreen for the immersion. When alt tabbed, I expect the audio to go silent. Fortunately this is the case for most games.

When developing my own, I will either use fullscreen or windowed depending on the current task at hand. Having the drawing and audio continuously update when the window isn't focused is only useful for local multiplayer testing.

[m8f]

I try to use more screen space and hide UI elements I don't use at the moment, that's why I prefer fullscreen. I often switch to fullscreen mode in other applications like IDEs, text editors, browsers, etc.

Regarding sound, I don't see much point in continuing playing the sound when I don't see the game. If I really want to listen to music from a game, I find its soundtrack.

[dpJudas]

I haven't needed to reboot the system due to a fullscreen app since the 90's or something close to that. Pressing ctrl+alt+delete and bringing up the task manager virtually always works nowadays. Failing that, using cmd+tab allows me to create a new desktop where I then can bring up the task manager.

I pretty much align with Rachael on my annoyance with games thinking the only possible way you want to play a game is to dedicate all your focus to the game. I alt-tab all the time to see what someone wrote on Discord, or quickly google something (for games that present me puzzles I don't feel like solving), or anything else really I might do on a computer. Having a game mute all sound and music just because I wanted to check something is super annoying.

Incidentally movies are equally annoying with their audio - having most of the sound at really low volume just so they can make some explosion sound louder. I keep turning the volume up and down depending on the scene in the worst of those. It is extremely rare I dedicate my attention to a movie to the level they seem to think I do.

[Gez]

It really depends on the game, there's no general rule.

For old games, especially those designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio and low resolution, I prefer windowed. For more modern games, fullscreen.

As for music and sound when alt-tabbed, I generally prefer silence, but there are exceptions there. For example a turn-based strategy game where the AI turns take a while to process, then I'd like to keep the audio when alt-tabbed so that I can hear the sound or music cue that I can play again...

[Jarewill]

For me it matters.
Usually I play on windowed mode, but there are a few games that I play on fullscreen. Though I prefer to always pause the program when alt-tabbed.
However, I highly dislike when games assume fullscreen by default, especially if they can't detect the screen's resolution and mess with everything on the desktop, because they try going fullscreen on a lower resolution than the screen's.
Really, I've seen AAA games that do that, meanwhile GZDoom can detect the screen's resolution without issues.

[Enjay]

I feel much the same as Gez.

Old 4:3 games windowed (some exceptions)
Modern games Fullscreen
Pausing: depends.

[leileilol]

Fullscreen nosound but NOT exclusive fullscreen. I don't like the mode switches when I alt-tab and i'd also like to alt-tab

[Ravick]

To be honest, I'd love games to keep playing their musics when alt-tad'ed in the 90's, when I had no Internet. But nowadays, as I can find their songs online with easy, I prefer them to go silence when doing so. And I also prefer full-screen because of the immersion and stuff.

However, I really believe the ideal way is to give the players the option to set these properties as they please.

[Apprentice]

It depends. When I'm developing maps either for Doom, Jedi Academy or another game, I prefer to run the game in a window so I can easily switch between the game and the editor in order to make changes in my map on the fly. When I'm playing a game, I like to play it fullscreen since I want to be emersed in the experience.

In both cases, I like the game to 'pause' itself when I hit alt+tab, making it silent up to the moment when I alt+tab back into the game . . .

[NeuralStunner]

Borderless fullscreen or windowed, no substitutes. Exclusive mode is antiquated and shouldn't be allowed by modern drivers, they could easily be doing the Borderless Gaming thing on their own if anybody bothered to do that. (But who cares when they could be squeezing 2 more FPS out of Tom Clancy's Assassin's Creed 2022?)

I don't usually mind if music continues while in background but other (nonvital) sounds should be muted. If the window remains visible, the framerate should probably be cut as well. (Best yet, make these things options.)

[Matt]

Windowed, when alt-tabbing stop making sound/music

I might appreciate fullscreen more if
(a) I weren't constantly paranoid about things going unexpectedly exclusive-fullscreen at the wrong resolution and messing up all my other windows and
(b) nearly all my gaming time nowadays weren't split between two things where I'm almost always taking some kind of notes somewhere for modding or fanfic

I'd want video in background tabs in my browser to pause when not in focus, too, but there's no simple way for the computer to tell if I actually want something running for background music unless I youtube-dl + MOC.

[sinisterseed]

Borderless Fullscreen with sound stopping when alt-tabbing.