The Human Element in Game Scoring
Aussie composer Mick Gordon is highly regarded for his experimental approach to musical composition. For 2013's Killer Instinct he employed a kangling, a Tibetan instrument traditionally carved into a human femur or tibia, to build a theme for the skeletal Spinal character out of actual bones. For 2016's Doom he famously sampled real chainsaw noises to pull off the unique guitar riffs that elevated the game's soundtrack into a heavy metal masterpiece.
However, when asked if he's considered incorporating any form of generative artificial intelligence into his creative process, Gordon does not mince his words.
F**k artificial intelligence, said Gordon, during an interview at PAX Australia 2026.
Upcoming Projects
Gordon can next be heard in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 when it's released on October 14, having contributed a track to score the first-person shooter's final boss fight. He is also working on the soundtrack to Defect, a cyberpunk-themed squad-shooter developed by veterans of Doom and Call of Duty. Fans can rest assured that in both instances, Gordon's music comes directly from human creativity rather than software prompts.
Limitations of Algorithms
Generative artificial intelligence is always going to be behind where humans are because it's going to be inherently trained off stuff that humans have already created, explained Gordon. It creates a large database of what it has been trained on, and then it draws a logical conclusion on whatever that dataset is. It's always going to be limited by its dataset, though. It's never going to be in a state where it's going to predict the next thing, the new thing, whatever humans can come up with. It's always going to be behind just by the nature of the way that these things work.
Gordon remains optimistic that audiences are always going to be drawn to the work of other humans, rather than machines.
Humans are always going to want to interact with other humans. Always, said Gordon. And I feel this artificial intelligence stuff is just giving people more reason to abandon this digital infection that we have with our lives now.
I feel that humans are always going to chase that human connection.
Fans of Gordon's work will be able to experience his music live when he takes the stage as the headline act at the 2027 RADAR festival, performing music from his Doom and Doom Eternal soundtracks with a full band for the very first time.
