History SeriousBusiness / VideoGames

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': Spira's love of Blitzball is such that you can use the save-crystal deep inside of Sin, the monster terrorizing the world to go play Blitzball. Even further, the combination of blitzball being Serious Business and a growing distrust in the Church of Yevon means that you can still play Blitzball after the Church has declared your party guilty of murdering a Maester, treason, practicing witchcraft without a license, jaywalking and every other ecclesiastical crime Bevelle could find. One of the Luca Goers even comments that treason means ''nothing'' in the sphere pool. Blitzball's serious business status is {{Justified}} by characters in game. What with Sin threatening all life on Spira every decade or so, most people have very little to look forward to in life. Blitzball technology is one of the only things that Sin does not purge back to the dark ages, making it a convenient distraction from the CrapsackWorld of the setting. So yeah, people take it pretty seriously.

* ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'': Johnny is an IntrepidMerchant. Correction; Johhny is ''the'' Intrepid Merchant. He will set his shop ''anywhere''. Secret rebel town? Obviously. Inside a factory that processes [[spoiler:human]] meat? Yup. An AbandonedLaboratory taken over by a demon? Duh. In the ''[[spoiler:freaking afterlife]]''? You bet. He even lampshades it for that last bit.

** {{Subverted|Trope}} in the Gamecube game. In the beginning it looks like the world has a Pokémon level of affection for gathering Robo parts and fighting with them (Even your elderly Landlord has one and is an adept fighter) but once you [[spoiler:go outside the city]] and learn about [[spoiler:Rahu, the invisible being of mass destruction]] and how it [[spoiler:nearly wiped out all of Earth's life, but was only able to be stopped since it thought a children's toy (the first robo) was a threat and fused with it, making it able to be hurt and repelled, while not destroyed fully.]] Those dangerous guns on tiny robots and the society's focus on learning to fight with them make perfect sense once you consider [[spoiler:they were all secretly being prepared for battle for when Rahu showed up again so the last bastion of humanity stood a chance.]]
** It gets worse than that. Custom Robos are apparently ''vital to police work.''

** These aren't just average Joes who thought that the end of the world was no reason not to clock in to work. These are people who saw people eating people, which then in turn got back up and ate other people. These guys aren't just determined mailmen and hard-working mall-cops. These are normal people who witness the apocalypse firsthand and went batshit insane because of it.
** Certain psychopaths avert this. The Vietnam Vet had a flashback when his granddaughter was eaten, and thought everyone was either vietcong (zombies) or civilians to be interrogated (humans). He returns to normal after you defeat him, apparently now aware of what he had done, and seems genuinely sorry for it. Those who suffer traumatic experiences in wars do tend to have flashbacks that overtake their personalities, and it can get quite serious with them.

** Psht. The drink cups aren't made out of Elite armor, they're made of the stuff that's used to plate Komato Sentinels. For the price of a Sentinel you could arm FOUR [[BossInMookClothing Annihilators]]. And it's still probably more efficient. Repeat, their drink cups are made of armor that halves all direct hitpoint damage and ignores armor damage ENTIRELY. Yeah, it's serious business alright.

* Lampshaded by Poppy in ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'':

** For context, Runterra's equivalent of the United Nations runs a GladiatorGames tournament that resolves major political issues in place of devastating wars that may involve {{Fantastic Nuke}}s.

*** Firearms have appeared in the anime. It's just that the DoesNotLikeGuns trope applies to the MoralGuardians in the United States, so those episodes generally did not get dubbed.
** It's not just in-universe, either. Fans of the {{Metagame}} treat it as Serious Business, spending about as much time choosing which Pokémon to use, breeding/catching, raising and training their teams as some do with real animals. Selective breeding is done, sometimes through several generations, to get the right stats, nature, ability and moveset, and exact numbers of wild Pokémon are fought to perfectly EV train (EV=Effort Values,the experience numbers that go up each time a Pokémon battles but aren't linked to XP, the points that gain levels) the Pokémon. Then held items and berries are added in. Metagamers also frequently use computer software to find just when to hatch an egg or catch a wild Pokémon to get a flawless or near flawless specimen, often shiny. The entire thing can take many hours to complete. The game itself has an entire community that has built rules and holds competitions aside from the official Nintendo ones and has even grouped the Pokémon into tiers of usefulness. And Arceus forbid anyone be revealed to be a hacker or using hacked Pokémon. Shortcuts with Rare Candies or VideoGame/GameShark codes are a surefire way to have your team slaughtered as well. Anyone who isn't totally devoted doesn't really stand much of a chance in competitive battling, as it doesn't matter if your team is all level 100 if you haven't taken the time to build your team properly. It's caused a bit of BrokenBase between hardcore competitive battlers and more casual gamers and turned some metagamers into the StopHavingFunGuys. Game Freak has countered this in the Sixth Generation by letting [=EVs=] be viewed and increased by way of Super Training. Obviously, the StopHavingFunGuys didn't really take this lying down, viewing the change as dumbing things down for the casuals.

** Somewhat humorously, though, it's made pretty clear that BMX (which you can also do in the game) is really not that big a deal; the guy who teaches it to you is a spastic nobody who pays ''you'' to get lessons from him.

** [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesKuroNoKiseki Van Arkride]] -- Anything involving cars are serious business for him, to the point where he'll race a complete stranger just to prove that his car is the best. Said stranger being the current racing champion matters not. Confectionary sweets are just as much serious business for him.

* A conversation in ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' has Adachi complain about his WeightWoes and that running around Ijincho isn't doing enough to keep his weight in check. A Geomijul operative that joins the party suggests to him a basic no-carbs diet with a twist: Adachi will be under constant surveillance by the Geomijul, and if he cheats, he dies. Adachi politely turns down the offer.

** [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky Rean Schwarzer]] -- Hot springs

* In the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'', there are several characters who are quite serious in something that they really loves.
** Rean Schwarzer -- Hot springs

** Tio Plato -- Mishy, the mascot character of Michelam Wonderland. Her room is full of MWL merchandise (and later some Kagemaru goods), her room decoration scene is all about her love of cat-related things, at one point she give Sully a lecture on the importance of Mishy and the one question she absolutely has to ask a fortune-teller is 'how compatible are Mishy and I?'.

** A group victory dialogue in Trails into Reverie has Estelle Bright claim that her staff is the strongest weapon compared to Randy Orlando's stun halberd and Gaius Worzel's spear. The three of them engage in a Mêlée à Trois with Ash Carbide wondering if this is how adults act.
** Van Arkride -- Anything involving cars are serious business for him, to the point where he'll race a complete stranger just to prove that his car is the best. Said stranger being the current racing champion matters not.

** Train tracks ''are'' serious business if you hope to provide a developing kingdom large enough to require a rail system with trade and transportation. Though Princess Zelda could stand to learn how to delegate the engineer selection process.

* ''VideoGame/GundamBreaker'' has Gunpla battling as a serious business. Not only are there professional circuits for it, but it has been used for anti-virus malware removal (in ''Gundam Breaker 3'') and even as substitutes for high school exams (in ''VideoGame/GundamBreakerMobile''). Using AI assistance to cheat at Gunpla battling is treated as a serious offense, on par with using performance enhancing drugs or doping in the Olympics.

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* While court trials are Serious Business in real life, the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' games elevate this to a new level with how over the top their cases get. And while being a lawyer is quite a respectable career in real life, they're practically superstars in the gameverse.
** The hotbed of murder and intrigue that is the [[ShowWithinAShow children's television]] industry of ''VisualNovel/{{Phoenix Wright|AceAttorney}}''. Deadly serious business.
** Spirit Mediums, too, seem to take it a little too far. But what mother wouldn't [[spoiler:be an accomplice in a murder framing her niece just so her daughter can be the family's successor?]]
** Phoenix's assistant/sidekick Maya considers anything she's interested in to be Serious Business. The sad part is, she usually finds at least one other person who wholeheartedly agrees with her, leaving Phoenix to wonder if he's the OnlySaneMan.
** In ''Apollo Justice'', {{stage magic|ian}}. To the point that one whole case gets derailed because the Judge wants to know how a trick was done. And the people who do know refuse to tell, because it's against the magician's code to reveal secrets. And if Apollo doesn't figure the trick out, the judge declares the defendant guilty of murder!
** Also, Apollo tends to be tired in the morning because he was up all night shouting at the top of his lungs so that his OBJECTIONS are extra impressive. That's dedication, man.
** Manfred von Karma takes the serious business of being a prosecutor to its limit. He is so obsessed with having and maintaining a perfect record (i.e. a 100% conviction rate, regardless of whether any of them were actually guilty or not) that he [[spoiler: murders a defense attorney over a penalty]]. And in case that wasn't enough, he also took the man's son under his wing and trained him to be a prosecutor every bit as cold and obsessed with winning as he was.
** Everyone in the courtroom (including the main character) react to holes in their story being pointed out as if they had been physically struck.
** Miles Edgeworth takes his love for the ''[[ShowWithinAShow Steel Samurai]]'' series very seriously, to the point where, after seeing a Steel Samurai theatre performance and finding out that the titular hero was played by [[TheDitz Larry Butz]], he acts like Larry just murdered his dog.

** In ''Apollo Justice'', {{stage magic|ian}}. To the point that one whole case gets derailed because the Judge wants to know how a trick was done. And the people who do know refuse to tell, because it's agains the magician's code to reveal secrets. And if Apollo doesn't figure the trick out, the judge declares the defendant guilty of murder!

** Manfred von Karma takes the serious business of being a prosecutor UpToEleven. He is so obsessed with having and maintaining a perfect record (i.e. a 100% conviction rate, regardless of whether any of them were actually guilty or not) that he [[spoiler: murders a defense attorney over a penalty]]. And in case that wasn't enough, he also took the man's son under his wing and trained him to be a prosecutor every bit as cold and obsessed with winning as he was.

** ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGo Go]]'' takes this [[UpToEleven to new levels]] with arguments over whatever team one is on, people actively catching Pokémon ''during the night'', '''''and even snatching other people's phones just for the concept of catching a legendary.'''''
** ''[[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon Sun and Moon]]'' even has one in universe about, of all things, Seaking:

* ''VideoGame/BattleTech2018'': One of the missions your merecenary company can take involves helping a pirate group raid a media production house to steal the master tapes of a certain tri-vid series before they air on behalf of a group of superfans.

** Crow Armbrust -- Artistic performance. Seeing the normally laid-back Crow so serious about making the concert a hit is really funny as seen in Cold Steel I. [[spoiler:In ''Cold Steel IV'', when the Class VII arrives in Crossbell for a mission and are in need of a distraction, he's able to create a performance worthy of Arc en Ciel in the span of a few days together with Elliot.]]

* The [[UpdatedRerelease Encore edition]] of ''VideoGame/TokyoMirageSessionsFE'' has a few setup questions upon starting a new game. The last one has a slide before it stressing that it's an important decision permanently affecting your entire playthrough. Then it asks whether the heroine should [[{{Meganekko}} wear glasses]] or not.

* ''VideoGame/{{Meteos}}''. It's a puzzle game with little colored blocks falling down, and you have to match them so they launch into the sky, and before they fill the screen. The story? Those things are meteors that are actively destroying planets, and sending them back is the only way to survive. One of the endings does a double inversion of this trope though: [[spoiler: After meteo is destroyed, the remaining planets decide to play Meteos as a simple sport. The denizens of the planets are very serious about this sport, though.]]

* ''VideoGame/KirbySqueakSquad'': In-Universe Example: Kirby's cake was stolen. [[ExcusePlot There's your story]]. Now go [[RoaringRampageofRevenge get your cake back]].

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'': The Vanu Vanu BirdPeople treat dance as a sacred matter of life and death. Their trademark dance, the Sundrop Dance, is often enough to intimidate other Vanu Vanu into backing down without a fight. To that end, the Vanu Vanu Beast Tribe quest involves getting the two tribes you're working with to do a Sundrop Dance against the more powerful and hostile Vundu tribe. It almost fails until the Warrior of Light steps in and joins in the dance, at which point the dancers develop a BattleAura and sent the Vundu scurrying for their lives. The Allied Beast Tribe quest has one Linu Vali developing a new dance, one that, when used against opponents who have been forced into an UnstoppableRage, stops their enraged charge in its tracks with an even stronger BattleAura.