Guitar Hero Live is a music video game produced by Activision and created by FreeStyleGames. The purpose of this game, like with previous ones in the series, is to utilize a special guitar controller to match fret patterns presented on-screen, scrolling note patterns in time with the music. The game is a relaunch of the Guitar Hero franchise, and it is the first new entry in the series since Warriors of Rock in 2010 and the eighth overall. Activision wanted to bring back Guitar Hero for the next generation of video game systems, but the new game had to be unique. Activision gave FreeStyleGames complete reign to rejuvenate the franchise, which resulted in the development of a new guitar controller with a 6-button, 3-fret configuration, as opposed to the 5-button controller of prior games.
FreeStyleGames also wanted to give the player a more immersive experience, so they designed the main career mode GH Live to display the note pattern atop full-motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist during a concert, with the crowd and other band members dynamically reacting to the player’s performance. FreeStyleGames also wanted to avoid the traditional downloadable content model when it came to adding new songs to the game, so they developed the GHTV mode, which includes curated playlists in the style of music television channels that are streamed around the clock, allowing them to acquire and add new songs easily.
Songs on GHTV are delivered with the note track on top of their music video or live concert footage. GHTV allows users to pick up and play currently-streamed music at any time or to pay money and in-game credits to play any song in the library instead of relying on traditional downloadable material. The game came with 42 songs on the disc and 200 songs in the GHTV collection; new content is released to GHTV every week via premium shows that give players unique incentives.
