I’m trying not to get too excited about this, because Green Day project lead Chris Foster was pretty clear about not planning to introduce future DLC to Green Day: Rock Band. As far as we know, the game will import the six 21st Century Breakdown DLC tracks, and that’s it.
However…yesterday Game Informer ran an interview with Green Day drummer Tré Cool, and they asked him about the albums included in the game. Here’s his response:
Yeah, there are select songs from other records. We wanted to get stuff from 39/Smooth and Kerplunk! on there, too, but the tapes are really old. I don’t know if you know about analog tapes, but to transfer them you need to play them. They are kind of stuck together right now. You have to “bake” them, and then you have one chance to run it over the machine to transfer it to make stems. Once it hits the head, it comes off the other side shredded. We’re making sure we have the right dudes to do it. We’re actually booking it; there’s one place in Burbank that still does it. We’re going to bite the bullet and shred our old tapes and put it to digital.
OK, so it’s pretty clear that they’re digitizing the old masters. He doesn’t specifically say they’re doing it for the game (or for any game), but that would certainly be one possible outcome of such a project.
Which brings us to the second point:
Q. If you get some of the older tapes baked and get them to digital … do you hope to have timetable for when you can do that stuff as downloadable content?
A. Whenever’s clever, baby.
Now, again, I don’t want to get too excited about this, because let’s face it — for a project like this the band is only tangentially involved in the actual game creation. So band members are not the best sources of info when it comes to specifics about things like DLC or any of the technology behind the game.
But the problem with getting the older albums into the game has always been explained as access to the master recordings. So if those recordings did become available…
If nothing else, it certainly increases the likelihood of getting songs from those albums as DLC in the main store, or in Rock Band 3.
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A critical principle of good design is scalability/extensibility (making sure your game will be “forward-compatible”, basically), and Harmonix has plenty of good designers. I’m confident that the game will at least [i]support[/i] future DLC. More than anything else, I think the real question regarding these albums is how well the game and the six existing DLC sell. Money’s everything, baby.
While I’m disappointed with the lack of Green Day’s pre-Dookie material, the lack of Nimrod or more Insomniac is what is most disappointing to me.
Note to Harmonix: If you change your minds about full album 39/Smooth, Kerplunk!, Nimrod and Insomniac, I will pay full price for all of it….so do it plz!
What does this have to do with Green Day: Rock Band?
They already gave a firm no on this….yes….future DLC for rock band 3 remains a possibility…but they made the game so that it won’t recognize any other DLC just like Guitar Hero did with Metallica…so there’s not a chance in hell of the songs being added to the Green Day…also because they’d have to get Green Day to go back and wear the crazy motion trackers and perform all those songs which ain’t gonna happen and why should it?
The songs transfer, which is cool, but it’s a closed set, so no hope remains.
I really dont care if it came out for GD:RB, I would be happy with it just being DLC or on any future releases…RB4, Track Packs, Lego RB2…. Becuase I would just export it anyway.
Rab, I hear what you’re saying, but here’s the thing: I don’t want to accuse anyone of outright lying, but it is not unheard of for developers to adamantly deny something’s existence until they’re ready to talk about it. There can be lots of reasons for this (exclusives, uncertainty, a desire to pick up a news cycle by unveiling something unexpected), and while it certainly doesn’t happen all the time, it does happen.
Now, Chris Foster told me pretty much point blank that DLC wasn’t happening: “Kerplunk! would not show up in this game in terms of DLC,” he said. But that still leaves some faint possibilities open: From order of least to most likely, in my opinion: 1. It’ll actually appear on the disc, as a last-minute surprise; 2. It would appear as an expansion disc — technically not DLC; 3. Some of the songs will appear as DLC for Green Day in spite of what’s been said (i.e., not the whole album, so Foster’s statement isn’t technically incorrect); or 4. It could appear as DLC in the main Rock Band or Rock Band 3.
I realize most of those are profoundly unlikely, but I can’t help hoping. I just wanna play “One for the Razorbacks,” man!
Yeah, I hear you but…
wake me up when they patch in jukebox mode, lol (i know they later retracted that…but they did float that after they cut it…and never explained why they did).