Recording Voices for Cars AppMates

People are going to be putting stuff on their conductive screens, not just gesturing. Perhaps this holiday season someone you know got AppMates, a combination of game app and physical cars that work together. If you haven’t already seen it, this video may make the concept more obvious.

I love how the headlights beam at night, the tires leave tracks in the dirt and other visual artifacts that the physical car makes when interacting with the app.

There are some interesting production implications that we can take from the video. First: if they make a new, physical car for the game it is expected to talk. So the cost of each toy includes audio production even though the app produces the sound. It’s not difficult to imagine a whole series of collectibles. As they release each new car the app will need to be updated with additional audio assets.

You may also have noticed that the characters talk to each other. Now if every character talks to every other character using their name, adding a new car means updating all of the dialog to include those new names. Luckily, it’s easier to update audio assets in one app than a collection of toy cars.

The marketing is pretty clever: the iPad app is free, you only pay for the toys. Sure, you can play without the cars — using a proxy instead — but it’s much more fun with the little cars, isnt it?


This page and more like it are part of my Game Audio board on Pinterest.