Mick Gordon, the legendary Australian composer who put a special touch on every shot in 2016’s Doom and its 2020 follow-up, Doom Eternal, told IGN that he’s open to the idea of contributing to future installments of id Software’s iconic shooter series. During an interview at this weekend’s PAX Australia, Gordon seemed to indicate that his involvement with Doom doesn’t necessarily end forever, despite the public falling out that occurred between the composer and the Doom Eternal development team in the wake of its release. “There are a lot of dominoes that would have to fall in a very specific way for that to happen,” Gordon said. “If those dominoes ever fell like that, I would. Of course. In a heartbeat.” E3 2019 Screenshots: Doom Eternal Gordon didn’t elaborate on what exactly those “dominoes” might be, but disputes between the composer and Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton may not have been fully resolved yet. In a lengthy 2022 post on Medium, Gordon accused developer id Software of not paying him half of his work on the Doom Eternal soundtrack and highlighted Stratton as a recurrently abusive presence throughout his work on the score and OST. However, it certainly seems like the experience hasn’t diminished Gordon’s love for Doom. “I had a whole list of ideas about where I wanted to go with Doom,” Gordon explained. “And I sure would love to explore that someday.” What the future of Doom looks like with or without Gordon’s involvement is another story. id Software was one of many studios hit hard by Microsoft’s ongoing cuts to its Xbox business, with 136 of the Doom developer’s staff hit by layoffs in July. At the time, senior services programmer Chris Hays was quoted as saying: “It’s hard to make a AAA game, like we’ve done before, with half the people. And by hard I mean impossible.” In the meantime, Gordon has been keeping busy with a variety of projects. He has contributed the theme music for the final boss fight in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, which will be released on October 14. He is also still actively working on the production of the full soundtrack for Defect, the squad-based cyberpunk shooter developed by veterans of Doom and the Call of Duty series. In 2027, he will return to Doom at least in the performance sense, headlining the UK’s RADAR music festival, where he will perform the music he composed for Doom and Doom Eternal with a full live band for the first time. Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN based in Sydney, Australia. He has 25 years of experience covering video games, serving as Deputy Editor of Australia’s Official PlayStation 2 Magazine and Editor of Australia’s Official Xbox 360 Magazine, before joining IGN in 2009. You can find him at Bluesky @tristanogilvie.bsky.social.
