As part of a studio management team, we provided technical and project management oversight on Audi A1 Beat Driver, an Audi-branded music game for iPhone and iPod touch. Our work included liaising with music publishers and record labels to license tracks for the game.
Released in April 2010 to promote the new Audi A1, Beat Driver combined driving with rhythm-based play. Players steered through environments that responded to the music, collecting objects and avoiding obstacles. The soundtrack shaped the experience, with nine tracks and artists including La Roux, White Lies, Metric and Torpedo. Audi’s launch announcement also described an international high-score table and score sharing through Facebook and Twitter.
The music licensing was therefore an integral part of the project. Alongside the technical and production work, it meant coordinating with organisations outside games development to bring the soundtrack into the finished app.
Beat Driver was developed by VEEMEE. It provides a mobile counterpart to our work on Audi’s spaces in PlayStation Home, showing another way the brand used interactive entertainment to introduce its cars to an audience.
Further reading: Audi’s April 2010 launch announcement (Japanese) and Pocket Gamer’s contemporary hands-on preview.