Dear Reader:
FreeStyle Games discusses Guitar Hero Live's approach to DLC, new channel on the way
Coming from a Videogamer interview with designer Jim Norris...
"We took a look at how people used their DLC in the past and how many times that a person who bought a song actually played that song. That's how we came up with this idea for the 'Plays'. And additionally, we're launching with more songs than have ever been available on a Guitar Hero ever. We've got 42 on-disc, 200+ on GHTV, we're going to have 70 more tracks by the end of the year, and we just wanted to provide a lot of variety for people.
We didn't want to get the disc and have those songs and those are the songs that you get until we decide to release some DLC and maybe you'll like some of that, maybe you won't. We took a look at how people get music these days, too. I'm old so I've got vinyl, love my vinyl, but apart from that I'm online. That's where I get my music. And for the most part, maybe I'll seek out some bands I know and want to listen to but I just kind of let the internet tell me what to listen to.
The thing is, for all that music you never have to put any more money into GHTV. There's nothing behind a magic curtain. You get all of this stuff right out of the box, you never have to spend another dime. But at the same time we wanted to give people choice. So if you want to play one song that you love 20 times in a row, you can do that by getting onto GHTV and earning in-game currency and then buying Plays with those. But if you don't want to do that you can just outright buy some Plays using real money currency. So we wanted to provide different ways for people to get access to music that they want.
We are planning on releasing a third channel actually pretty soon, and that will also be just a part of GHTV. That's the glory of GHTV. It lives online. It's an always-online playable music video network. It's our new platform. We can make changes to it that the user will never see. It's easy for us to add a new song, it's easy for us to add a new customisable highway or player card, even new game modes or new channels. This is stuff that's going to be low-impact on the player and you're just going to get it. We're trying a new approach and we just hope that people enjoy it and people give us feedback."