TouchIT

Challenge

Every minute, 100,000 Guitar Hero songs are played in the 16 million instrument-game playing households. Since its launch in 2005, the Guitar Hero fan base has grown from Rockstar groupies to pop-loving tweens, tech-newbie “Wii moms,” country folk and every music lover in between.

With the release of Guitar Hero 5, Activision wanted an online destination that would appeal to all its divas, while facilitating digital interaction, global community integration, user personalization and product sales. This new, worldwide social hub would also double as a 24/7 one-stop shop for everything Guitar Hero. So, we rolled up our sleeves and dove right in like Jim Morrison at a Doors concert.

Solution

Because 90 percent of gaming conversations happen outside of a franchise’s portal, we integrated popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube as a way to distribute news, updates, video, user comments and worldwide community chatter. This helps keep the conversation within the confines of the hub without alienating the already-popular forums. We also adopted a new rating system for songs, games and instruments that allowed users to mark their musical preferences with a rockin’ “iLike button,” which encourages simple participation, drives conversation and increases camaraderie.

In order to further user creativity, we built the “My Guitar Hero Experience,” which allows users to design a personal dashboard that displays performance stats, tournaments, friends, groupies and other profile information. We then went a step further with our state-of-the-art Streamlined Console Linking Process to facilitate user communication and the purchasing of songs and GH products.

The “What’s New” section highlights the awesome music selection with user favorites, a detailed Guitar Hero music catalog and downloadable music charts.