Mick Gordon (composer)
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Michael John Gordon is an Australian composer, record producer, musician, and sound designer, composing music primarily for video games. Gordon has composed for several first-person shooters, including ''
LawBreakers ''LawBreakers'' is a defunct first-person shooter video game developed by Boss Key Productions and published by Nexon. It was released worldwide on August 8, 2017, for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. Physical copies were distributed by Limite ...
'', '' Wolfenstein: The New Order'', '' Wolfenstein: The Old Blood,'' ''
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,'' the 2016 reboot of ''
Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...
'' and its sequel ''
Doom Eternal ''Doom Eternal'' is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. The sequel to ''Doom'' (2016), and the sixth main game in the ''Doom'' series, it was released on March 20, 2020, for Windows, PlaySt ...
'', '' Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus'', and seasons one and two of the 2013 fighting game ''
Killer Instinct ''Killer Instinct'' is a series of fighting video games originally created by Rare and published by Midway, Nintendo, and Microsoft Studios. The original ''Killer Instinct'' was released for arcades in 1994; the game was then released for ...
.''


Career

Gordon began his musical career as a jazz / blues guitarist in his teens. He first began to work as a sound designer with
Pandemic Studios Pandemic Studios, LLC was an American video game developer based in Westwood, Los Angeles. Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick founded the studio in 1998 after leaving Activision. Pandemic Studios, alongside BioWare, was acquired in 2005 by Elevation ...
, where he contributed additional sound design for '' Destroy All Humans! 2''. In 2013, he scored the first season of the fighting video game, ''
Killer Instinct ''Killer Instinct'' is a series of fighting video games originally created by Rare and published by Midway, Nintendo, and Microsoft Studios. The original ''Killer Instinct'' was released for arcades in 1994; the game was then released for ...
'', a reboot of the original 1994 title. The following year, Gordon scored the second season of ''Killer Instinct'' and the action-adventure first-person shooter '' Wolfenstein: The New Order'' (developed by
MachineGames MachineGames Sweden AB is a Swedish video game developer based in Uppsala. The studio was founded in 2009 by seven former employees of Starbreeze Studios, including founder Magnus Högdahl. After unsuccessfully pitching game ideas to several ...
). He returned to the ''Wolfenstein'' series in 2015 to compose the score for '' Wolfenstein: The Old Blood,'' a prequel to '' Wolfenstein: The New Order.'' In 2016, Gordon completed the score for the science fiction first-person shooter, ''
Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...
'', the sequel to Doom 64 and soft reboot of the franchise, developed by
id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...
. His score for ''Doom'' won a number of awards including a D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition, SXSW Gaming Award for Excellence in Musical Score,
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Best Music/Sound Design and was nominated for a BAFTA Games Award for Best Music. In 2017, Gordon completed the score for the horror first-person shooter, ''
Prey Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...
'', developed by
Arkane Studios Arkane Studios SASU is a French video game developer based in Lyon. It was founded in 1999, and released its first game, ''Arx Fatalis'', in 2002. Besides the Lyon studio, Arkane Lyon, Arkane Studios operates Arkane Studios LLC ( trading as Ark ...
. He also worked alongside Martin Stig Andersen to again return to the ''Wolfenstein'' series, scoring '' Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus'', developed by
MachineGames MachineGames Sweden AB is a Swedish video game developer based in Uppsala. The studio was founded in 2009 by seven former employees of Starbreeze Studios, including founder Magnus Högdahl. After unsuccessfully pitching game ideas to several ...
. In 2020, Gordon completed the score of ''
Doom Eternal ''Doom Eternal'' is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. The sequel to ''Doom'' (2016), and the sixth main game in the ''Doom'' series, it was released on March 20, 2020, for Windows, PlaySt ...
''; while the music for the game was once again well-received, circumstances around the soundtrack release led to a public falling out between Gordon and id Software and a parting of ways. In November 2022, Gordon addressed this dispute in a lengthy statement on
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. On 23 June 2020 British rock band
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announced they would be working with Gordon on their upcoming release. Vocalist
Oliver Sykes Oliver Scott Sykes (born 20 November 1986) is a British singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Bring Me the Horizon. He also founded the apparel company Drop Dead Clothing, and created a graphic novel. Early ...
discusses how he fell in love with the ''Doom Eternal'' soundtrack during quarantine. Being heavily inspired by Gordon's work, the band decided to reach out to him and offer a collaboration. The resulting work, titled "
Parasite Eve Parasite Eve may refer to: * ''Parasite Eve'' (novel), a 1995 Japanese science fiction horror novel by Hideaki Sena * ''Parasite Eve'' (film), a 1997 Japanese science fiction film based on the novel * ''Parasite Eve'' (video game), a 1998 action ...
", was released on 25 June alongside an accompanying music video. The collaboration then expanded into the commercial release, '' Post Human: Survival Horror'', released on 30 October 2020.


id Software controversy

Following the release of ''Doom Eternal''s OST in April 2020, several online music bloggers and fans noted the disparity in quality between the ''Doom'' (2016) OST and the one released with ''Eternal''. On 19 April, Gordon confirmed on
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that much of it was not his work. Subsequently, Marty Stratton, an executive producer at id Software, posted an
open letter An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. Open letters usually take the form of a letter addressed to an indiv ...
on
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that alleged Gordon did not provide the source material for the additional tracks on the OST and that he required a contractual extension to get the OST completed in time. Following this, public outcry against Gordon reached a level where he received explicit death threats and graphic messages of intent to harm him and his family. Gordon's message accounts, servers and phones were allegedly inundated with abuse, seriously impacting his mental health. On 9 November 2022, Gordon published an article on
Medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane *Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...
explaining his side of the story in the form of a defensive rebuttal of the accusations in Stratton's post. It made several statements that the open letter from Stratton contained lies. He called out claims made by Stratton accusing him of not providing the original source material for the soundtrack, and that Bethesda had to grant him an extension to get the OST done, when in reality, he had not even been contracted to create the OST at the time of the delay. This in turn led to his reputation in the industry being harmed. Gordon provided a variety of forms of evidence including photographs of emails to verify his claims. Gordon further stated that when his lawyers requested that the open letter be removed in response to this and other evidence, he was instead offered "a six-figure payout" in exchange for a lifetime gag order without the removal of the original letter. He also alleged that he was not compensated for more than half of the music that ended up being used in the final release of the game.


Musical style and inspiration

According to Gordon's official website, he "utilises a broad range of modern musical sound design and traditional composition techniques in order to be unconstrained by any singular genre," and that it is "inspired by the connection between the audience and the experience." Gordon's work "considers the role of music as a translation of the world in which it exists rather than a simple accompaniment."


Discography


Soundtrack albums


Production credits


Works


Awards and nominations


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Mick Australian composers Australian male composers Living people Video game composers 1985 births