Lego Rock Band - Development

Development

Industry rumors circulated in early 2009 of the game's existence and appeared to be true when mention of the game was shown in a slide (that was later removed) in Harmonix's Dan Teasdale's presentation at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The game was announced officially on April 21, 2009. TT Fusion's head of animation, Matt Palmer, stated that Harmonix had approached Traveler's Tales who, in turn, approached TT Fusion on the game concept around October 2008. At that time, about 50% of the studio was against the concept, but had come around by the end of 2008, realizing that they "weren’t just skinning one franchise on another". Despite skepticism for the viability of the game, the game is stated to combine "two compelling properties" by Traveller's Tales managing director Tom Stone, and has been called "a social game experience that crosses every generation and every genre of rock" by MTV Games senior vice president Bob Picunko.

Iggy Pop voices the in-game tutorials for the game, and lends his trademark shirtless image to a Lego avatar for the game. David Bowie, along with his band and a venue loosely based on his music video for "Let's Dance", also appears in the game. The bands Queen, Blur, and Spinal Tap have Lego avatars for the game. In the case of Queen guitarist Brian May, he had required that the developers represent his hair style on his Lego caricature. John Drake of Harmonix stated the presence of Pop and Bowie add "rock credibility" to the family-friendly title. TT Fusion opted to map the motions of the Lego mini-figurines to key frame animation instead of motion capture which had been used on previous Rock Band titles, as it allowed for them to animate more exaggerated motions and effects.