“I didn't mix those and wouldn't have done that.”

May 5, 2020 10:07 AM

The Doom Eternal OST Controversy Explained [IGN] “Id Software and Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton has issued a public statement about its current relationship with Doom Eternal composer Mick Gordon after weeks of speculation that there was some kind of trouble between the two parties over the recently released Doom Eternal soundtrack. After a slight delay, the Doom Eternal soundtrack part of the game’s collector’s edition was released on April 20, a month after the game was released. But fans quickly found something amiss with the sound mixing leading to a backlash against id Software and in particular id’s lead audio engineer Chad Mossholder. The controversy began in April when a viral Twitter thread highlighted the sound-mixing for the newly released Doom Eternal soundtrack. Twitter users @thatADCDguy posted side-by-side visual comparisons of the BFG Division track from Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal and noted that the mixing for the Doom Eternal version was less dynamic.”
posted by Fizz (17 comments total)

• id confirms it's parted ways with Doom Eternal composer after soundtrack controversy [Eurogamer]

In a separate but related comment, Gordon told an inquiring fan that he doubted he'd work with id Software again, driving speculation that relations between the two parties had soured - which, in turn, and with depressing inevitably, saw id's lead audio designer, who was responsible for remixing the remainder of the soundtrack, become the target of online abuse from certain quarters of the Doom community.

posted by Fizz at 10:13 AM on May 5, 2020

This is so sad to read and see play out. Mick Gordon is one of the main reasons the rebooted Doom/Doom Eternal is so as good as it is. The music is excellent and it works in tandem with the game. They're kind of forever linked in my brain.
posted by Fizz at 10:16 AM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've really enjoyed the old Doom OST, but Mick and the internet pitchfork mob did not come out of this looking well.
posted by Anonymous Function at 10:18 AM on May 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

Agreed, going after the audio designer, who is literally just doing their job, that is some gamergate bullshit that pisses me the fuck off. It's one thing for a messy corporate drama to play itself out and for two creative teams to go their separate ways, it's completely something else to target and bully people.
posted by Fizz at 10:24 AM on May 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

It's heartening in These Times In Which We Live to see both reddit and gamer culture avoid, for once, pointing the Internet Outrage Machine at the wrong people out of ignorance or spite.

god dammit, people
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 10:46 AM on May 5, 2020

These fucking crybabies. There's always something to complain about, and they "know" exactly who on the development chain is responsible for it. And Mick Gordon seems like the one who caused this whole thing.

Gordon asked for an extended deadline, not id. Gordon agreed to allow id to use some of their in-house mixes on the tracks he hadn't finished. And now Gordon is the one point the finger (and the resultant internet mob) at Mossholder to deflect any sort of "blame" about the mix.

And finally - this is making news because these crybabies are loud, not that there's a lot of them. Doom Eternal has sold millions of copies. The tweet that started this off has 341 retweets and 2k likes. Gordon's reply has 4.5k likes. I didn't realize a post with 545 retweets like Gordon's "I didn't do that mix" tweet counts as viral in 2020. The reach on this story is so much bigger than the amount of people who actually care about the sonic envelope of a song on the Doom Eternal OST.
posted by thecjm at 11:33 AM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

I don't like the ire directed toward id's in-house audio engineer, but I also don't think I like this airing of corporate dirty laundry that could affect Mick Gordon's ability to get future contracts. Most of all I don't like the idiotic gamer culture driving this whole affair (love the Dooms and their OSTs though!).
posted by alspacka at 11:44 AM on May 5, 2020

I also don't think I like this airing of corporate dirty laundry that could affect Mick Gordon's ability to get future contracts.

Gordon forced their hand with the way he handled things. He could have just taken his fucking lumps instead of directing a hate mob at his employer over a contract dispute where he was in the wrong.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:42 PM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

This was really interesting to see play out. I don't have much useful insight to contribute except to say that I work in software but not in game development, and peering over from my side of the world, I am very much not envious of the position that studios seem to be in by default these days regarding their relationship with players. Having this kind of fast and unfiltered feedback loop between the community (e.g. gaming subreddits) and studios -- sometimes individual developers! -- really seems to have resulted in an incredibly entitled attitude among a growing subset of players.
posted by Expecto Cilantro at 1:34 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, even if AAA game developers had pay and benefit parity with enterprise developers (which, LOL, no, they're not even close) and crunch wasn't a thing, I can't ever see myself accepting a job with one, for reasons exactly like this.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:34 PM on May 5, 2020

He could have just taken his fucking lumps instead of directing a hate mob at his employer over a contract dispute where he was in the wrong.

Have I missed something that Mick said publicly, or are you saying that “didn’t mix those and wouldn’t have done that” and "doubt we’ll work together again" constitutes directing a hate mob?
posted by alspacka at 3:40 PM on May 5, 2020

Shame, these were some good game soundtracks.

Doom Eternal was fun in short bursts but the grinding predictability of the level design and the repetitiveness of the encounters meant I dropped it long before I dropped Doom 2016, which I also didn't finish. Guess these aren't the games for me any more, which is a bummer but I'm sure others are enjoying them, even though they are wrong to do so.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:39 PM on May 5, 2020

Have I missed something that Mick said publicly, or are you saying that “didn’t mix those and wouldn’t have done that” and "doubt we’ll work together again" constitutes directing a hate mob?

When the mob started looking for someone to blame, through careful omissions he implied he didn’t have any responsibility over how the project turned out.

That is a separate issue to the reflex of gamers to mob up at the slightest sign of dissatisfaction, but that in itself is a complex issue - there’s a general lack of accountability in the games industry in general, and awful as it is, mob harassment is the only thing that seems to get publishers to ever change their behaviour, so getting people to stop doing the awful thing is currently equivalent to telling them they’re not allowed to complain. Hell, big Kotaku exposes haven’t been enough to get AAA developers to treat their staff with dignity.
posted by Merus at 8:19 PM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Gordon was late twice but hasn't taken responsibility once. And at any point he could have told the hatemob that they had the wrong idea, and didn't. What a wretched shitheel. May he never escape the lower rungs of Soundcloud again.
posted by EatTheWeek at 8:22 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

decrying online hate mobs and wishing professional ruin on a "wretched shitheel" because he wasn't sufficiently accountable to the internet in the same post is a bodybuilder flex
posted by jy4m at 9:41 PM on May 5, 2020

Yeah, fair enough.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:56 PM on May 5, 2020

"I doubt we'll work together again" is discrete and could mean anything from "I don't like how I was treated and don't want to work with them again" to "I screwed up and doubt they'll hire me again."

I really don't like the idea that someone is obliged to tell the world all the details of their employment history in order to be able to say, "Hey, I didn't do that work people are mis-attributing to me."
posted by straight at 2:36 AM on May 6, 2020 [2 favorites]