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My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

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Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#151

Post by Loughla »

jszymborski wrote: post #101
FeistySkink wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a simple contract with all conditions spelled out. The company pays.

Why would companies go to bat for these execs that are liabilities? Why not pay out the settlement and send Marty to Zenimax's St Helena division to prevent having to pay this sort of thing out again? (or worse, risk the damage of having someone not willing to take hush money like Mr. Gordon).

>Why would companies go to bat for these execs that are liabilities?

1. Companies are not alive. They are synthetic entities made up of individuals. They do not make decisions on their own. Their decisions are dictated by the decisions of the individuals inside of the company.

2. If I work in AP and receive a notice from a company executive to pay a contract that is signed by said executive (if they have clearance in policy to do so) and the person we're paying, we have all of the back end paperwork we need to pay it out, I'm paying it out. My job as AP is not to judge right or wrong. It's to process according to acceptable accounting practices, in general, and corporate policy specifically.

In other words, why do people act like a company is this mysterious creature able to sort right from wrong, and ignore the influence people like actual executives of that company can have on processes?

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#152

Post by Comevius »

s_dev wrote: post #57

I would expect this story from a struggling indie game dev startup but ID Games, Zenimax, Mick Gordon and Stratton are all huge players in the game dev industry -- thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole. I was always curious about why the Doom Eternal OST never really showed up on Spotify. This story explains that.

On the contrary, after the horror stories coming from Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, sometimes requiring the government to intervene, my expectation is really low. If anything this is a dull affair since nobody got killed or sexually harrassed.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#153

Post by filoleg »

agentwiggles wrote: post #119
runevault wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His sheer enthusiasm in this video is incredible. Also the glee when he adds 666 to the music lol (or maybe it was a pentagram, or both? Been a while since I watched).

The spectrogram stuff you're referencing was one of my favorite parts, and also the description of his crazy array of pedals he used to get the signature sound.

Gordon's YouTube channel is amazing. His videos about creating the sound of DOOM (2016) are stuck in my head very strongly. The guy clearly is extremely passionate about his work, and he loves going into the nitty gritty of the process.

His very short video about the old soviet hardware synth he managed to find and pretty much had to reverse-engineer to make use of was very memorable[0].

0. https://youtu.be/oKzYf1JW7kE

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#154

Post by ndepoel »

mrob wrote: post #122
Arjuna wrote: post #45

”The same thoughtless disregard for basic music fundamentals that plagued the preliminary edits ended up on the final OST.” As a musician and music-lover, seeing how they brickwalled [1][2] Mick’s tracks in the screenshots only serves to add to the heartbreak of his entire saga. [1] Loudness War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war [2] The Loudness War https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ

It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon. See the section starting at "id Software approved my mastering". The alleged "disregard for basic music fundamentals" appears to have introduced more dynamic range, although not in a way that's pleasant to listen to.

Lowering the volume does not equal introducing more dynamic range. It was just done to avoid clipping when pasting two bits of track on top of each other.

The masters delivered by Mick Gordon were meant for use in the game. I'm not an expert at game audio engineering, but the brickwall mastering may have been intentional to make the music stand out over the rest of the game audio. Either way those masters were approved by id Software for use in the game so nothing was wrong with those.

The problem is that those exact same masters were then used to produce the OST. To do a proper OST, you would have to go back to the source materials, remix them and produce a new master that is suitable for playback as an album. One that isn't as brickwalled and maintains more dynamic range. This is the important part that was skipped by Chad Mossholder and not caught by id Software's internal QA. If you take an already mastered piece of music meant for a different context and just cut it up and splice it back together, without regard for volume leveling, tempo adjustment or proper balancing, then you're inevitably going to produce garbage.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#155

Post by brightball »

bombcar wrote: post #124
brightball wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Touched on this in my other comment too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535123 Reading through this particular situation though, he was in a unique position to negotiate due to all of management bungles. 1. Original soundtrack author. 2. Conference announcement that he would be producing the sound track as presales exploded. There were others as well. I'm a very patient person, but one thing I've learne…

It's hard to find good legal representation you can trust and is knowledgeable about the industry/situation. It is very easy to find a lawyer who will take your money, however.

That's a very valid statement, but at the same time you have to be prepared for it if you plan to be a contractor anyway.

You need your own agreements. You need somebody to review agreements presented to you. If there are IP concerns you need to have clear legal language present around that as well.

To get there, it's worth it to network in attorney circles. It's well worth it.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#156

Post by filoleg »

mrob wrote: post #122
Arjuna wrote: post #45

”The same thoughtless disregard for basic music fundamentals that plagued the preliminary edits ended up on the final OST.” As a musician and music-lover, seeing how they brickwalled [1][2] Mick’s tracks in the screenshots only serves to add to the heartbreak of his entire saga. [1] Loudness War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war [2] The Loudness War https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ

It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon. See the section starting at "id Software approved my mastering". The alleged "disregard for basic music fundamentals" appears to have introduced more dynamic range, although not in a way that's pleasant to listen to.

> It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon

Where are you getting this? His in-game music was perfectly fine, and the only instances of brickwall mastering were present within the "official OST" (that was mixed by Chad, splicing together the in-game music poorly). Which Gordon had no hand in whatsoever, outside of providing the source material, i.e., the in-game music.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#157

Post by filoleg »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #136
somuchfordonor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This forum is full of people with amnesia over how many id Tech people are assholes.

But John Carmack is such a great programmer. How can these people be assholes? /s

John Carmack had no hand in DOOM (2016), and was out of iD Software for quite a while by that point, so I have no idea why you felt the need to bring him up.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#158

Post by mrob »

ndepoel wrote: post #154
mrob wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon. See the section starting at "id Software approved my mastering". The alleged "disregard for basic music fundamentals" appears to have introduced more dynamic range, although not in a way that's pleasant to listen to.

Lowering the volume does not equal introducing more dynamic range. It was just done to avoid clipping when pasting two bits of track on top of each other. The masters delivered by Mick Gordon were meant for use in the game. I'm not an expert at game audio engineering, but the brickwall mastering may have been intentional to make the music stand out over the rest of the game audio. Either way those masters were approv…

>Lowering the volume does not equal introducing more dynamic range. It was just done to avoid clipping when pasting two bits of track on top of each other.

If you overlap two tracks, and reduce volume to avoiding clipping, the combined track has spikes in volume where they overlap. This is increased dynamic range. But like I said, it is not musically pleasant to listen to, and it's certainly reasonable to complain about it.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#159

Post by pie_flavor »

gausswho wrote: post #128
meanmrmustard92 wrote: post #106

Marty came across as a slimy prick in the (otherwise excellent) Noclip documentary about the making of Doom (2016). Turns out the real-life version is much worse.

I remember bouncing off DOOM Eternal after a couple hours because all its clever new mechanics were oddly anti-fun and puzzly resource management. Like the creators didn't know what made the predecessor special. I was confused and stopped playing a couple hours in. So I watched the Noclip hoping to understand the design choices better. Marty was disgustingly smug and assured about it all, coming across like a victim…

I found it dull and repetitive, and loved Eternal. I have no idea whether I'm in the minority, but just because someone is a horrible person ethically doesn't mean that their taste in video games is horrible too.

Re: My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

#160

Post by filoleg »

umvi wrote: post #92

Not surprising behavior from id software. If you've ever read the book "Masters of Doom" (great book, btw) you can see that id software from the very beginning is really only known for making cutting edge games and that they've always had problems with bad management and abusing employees.

There is a difference between questionable management when your company consists of under 10 employees (aka ultra-startup mode) vs. when you are a large gamedev company under the umbrella of a massive publisher.

A lot of things can be more understandable when you are a single-digit employee count company running on a shoestring budget (which iD Software was at the time), especially when no intentional malice was present. It is another thing when you are a large dev company that has a massive financial backing of a massive publisher, and you appear to be intentionally malicious towards a single contributor who did nothing wrong and was instrumental to your success.

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