Source: MTV Music

“Green Day: Rock Band” may not reinvent global music or the Rock Band mold, gameplay-wise, but that doesn’t mean the developers at Harmonix didn’t add some extra bells and whistles for this release.

One of the main focal points for this release was on recreating the feeling of being at a real Green Day concert, and the band wanted to make sure that certain concert elements were acknowledged. We spoke with Chris Foster, the project lead on “Green Day: Rock Band,” about how the new crowd tech came together:
“In the initial talks with them, one of the things that the band thought was really important was capturing the crowd participation element of their shows.

It’s a major part of it. In their concerts, crowds are getting on stage and singing, they’re bringing brought up to play ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ as an impromptu band, so we wanted to capture some of that.”

Unfortunately, since Harmonix was working with specific original recordings, there was a level of improvisation that was simply not feasible. They were, however, able to add some much-needed variety to the number of crowd animations.

“We did a lot more with the audience than we normally do. They can pogo, they can wave their arms at Billie Joe, they can fist pump. They can do all the things that make them really part of the performance, and they can even get up and do some stage diving and crowd surfing, which is new for us and totally appropriate to a Green Day show.”