By Elianne Halbersberg

For nearly a decade, AvatarLabs has been creating graphics and Internet marketing strategies for major studio clients. Earlier this year, the company debuted an in-house app, Rhythm Racer, that put AvatarLabs on the “app map,” if you will. The company was already well-established and respected for their content and quality, which enabled them to competitively enter the app field on their own with a certain level of built-in success. Rhythm Racer was downloaded by over a quarter-million users who paved the way for a new and improved version, recently released as Rhythm Racer 2.

Available from the Apple App Store as a free download for iPhone and iPod Touch, and in HD for iPad, RR2 is already exceeding the success of the original app. Josh Golsen, Senior Producer, AvatarLabs, spoke to Planet Ill about Rhythm Racer 2, the transition toward cell phones as tools for mass communication and accessing content, and how AvatarLabs executes their mission statement: “More music, more levels, still free.”

Planet Ill: What is the history of AvatarLabs?

Josh Golsen: AvatarLabs started out in 2001 as a motion graphics company. We did titles and animated copy for feature films and television shows. With the web 2.0 boom, Internet marketing became our core business — things like rich media, websites, games and viral activities for feature films. Our founder, Rex Cook, is all about pushing

We work with a lot of major studios. We did campaigns for The Dark Knight, Star Trek and many of the Harry Potter films, and we’ve won a lot of awards for our work. Alice in Wonderland and Avatar are our two most recent successes. Our first iPhone app was for Bolt, the Disney movie. It was a lot of fun, easy to play, and was incredibly successful with over 1.6 million downloads worldwide.

Planet Ill: What led to the creation of Rhythm Racer?

Josh Golsen: My background is content development for film and television. We also have a lot of gamers in-house and we decided to start developing intellectual property for ourselves. The result was Rhythm Racer 1. That was our first app, and we put it out in January 2010 to see what would happen with it, and as a demo to show our clients what we could do. It was a moderate success with close to 250,000 downloads, and it received a lot of feedback that we took to heart when we decided to make Rhythm Racer 2. We were going to do a big update to make it a lot better, but we realized that we were actually creating a new game, and that’s how Rhythm Racer 2 was born.

Planet Ill: It’s been reported that there was a mad rush of app designers when the floor opened up for them. Were you a part of that?

Josh Golsen: We got into games through our marketing clients: Sony, Warner Brothers, Fox, Paramount and Disney. We were fortunate to have these great relationships, and when the rush started, they wanted to hit that audience, so they paid us to create a branding experience. After doing many of those, we decided to do it for ourselves. It is pretty wild; it changes all the time. Thousands of people are doing it, it’s very competitive, there are so many apps and you have to stay on top of trends. If you fall behind, you lose. Now the big thing is creating for the iPad.

Planet Ill: What does it take to stand out in the app market?

Josh Golsen: I think there are a couple of different factors. In terms of a name brand, certain makers of games have developed a status. For example, a lot of people follow and download Tapulous, the makers of TapTap. The app store is a marketplace where anybody can shine, whether it’s a huge company or one person in their bedroom, as long as they make a good product. Our apps are “pick up and play.” They’re not super complicated.

You can delve in and enjoy the experience at some level, but it’s a casual gaming device that people play for three or four minutes at a time. A lot of the games we create are targeted for short time spans, but you can play them over and over. Unless you’re on an airplane for hours, people don’t have a lot of time to play a game. Also, the iPhone screen is very small, so you must work around the limitations and have a clean design and an intuitive interface.

Planet Ill: There is a quote in your media kit that says, “Mobile is the new horizon of digital technology, interactivity and creativity.” Please explain.

Josh Golsen: That is a trend we see in every aspect of what we do, from online branded activities to ads to mobile applications. When the web explosion happened, it provided a destination for users to delve into content and information. Now it’s about bringing that content where people already are. For example, a lot of people are on Facebook, so why send them elsewhere for information? The iPhone, Smartphone, Blackberry and Android are powerful devices, and you can do a lot more with them now than you could three years ago. You can make a very robust 3-D experience with video and audio and update it dynamically. Practically everyone has some type of mobile device, and these products are evolving to better fit the needs of the user base.

Planet Ill: Why do people want to do things on such a small screen?

Josh Golsen: On a lot of Smartphones, you can adjust text size. Devices like the iPhone are useful. They have utility apps, programs and games that offer something for everybody.

Planet Ill: What are the costs to develop an app in terms of market research, prototypes and who tests them?

Josh Golsen: That’s tough to answer because it depends on the product. Rhythm Racer is a pretty dynamic game for the iPhone. It’s a 3-D environment, a bigger app, and it took about six months for us to develop it. We started at 25 percent with Rhythm Racer 2, carried over from the first version. We tested it on people within the company. They’re from all walks of life, and all interests, and with everything we do, we consider ourselves our biggest critics. So it is very important for us to be happy with our products. There are points of process and daily building with testers who work with us as well.

Planet Ill: How do you generate revenue from a free app?

Josh Golsen: There are different ways of generating revenue in games. First, there is downloadable content for purchase. The app has big music elements, and you can purchase additional music packs. The free songs are from independent artists and the premium artists can be purchased. Music is universal; everyone likes something different, and if you like the game, we feel it’s our responsibility to provide variety in the types of music because of the undertone to the game. So part of it was providing options for all different tastes.

In the four free songs, “Asteroid,” the instrumental track by Parry Gripp, is from Rhythm Racer 1. He has written for television and film, for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Superhero Squad, and he’s had a lot of success on YouTube. He also wrote the theme song for the game that plays on the menu screen. Kill the Alarm’s “Fire Away” is modern rock. King Atom’s “Hydraulic” is rock like the old Chili Peppers, and “I Quit” by Ordinary Peoples is hip-hop. Another way we generate revenue in Rhythm Racer is through serving advertisements. Players will only see advertisements while playing the free content, never on the paid content.

Planet Ill: When it came time to create Rhythm Racer 2, where did you see needs for changes and improvements?

Josh Golsen: First of all, the musical choices. The original app had two songs. A lot of people wanted more music. So we figured out a way to get more music and variety. Second, a lot of it was about the experience of playing the game and how to let people interact with music in different ways. The game play is similar, but we take each song and do a MIDI of the song — “gemming” is what it’s called in videogame lingo — so that all the notes are laid out according to the instruments, rhythm and vocal melody.

On Hip-Hop, with a repeating melody, you can follow the vocal cadence. You can follow the drums, bass and guitar riffs, and you can see various scripted events and animations in accordance with what you’re hearing in the game. In terms of programming, the focal point of Rhythm Racer 2 was upping the experience and providing options for feedback. We’re building a community with our fans. OpenFeint is a third-party application and the most popular social networking platform on the iPhone. It allows you to import your friends, there is a leader board, there is a targeted or social leader board, and you can join our e-mail list from the game. With this kind of stuff, feedback is everything, and we’ll take to heart and try to implement as much as we can in our future updates.

Planet Ill: Rhythm Racer 2 is available for iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad, as well as in HD. Do these version differ?

Josh Golsen: It’s the same thing on all of them, but the HD is the iPad version. The screen resolution is bigger, so it has a slightly different ratio, and everything is laid out in accordance and customized with HD to fit the size of the screen. Also, with a larger space, the menu screens to select the level and songs look different on the iPad version because there is a lot more space to work with.

Planet Ill: Is there a Rhythm Racer 3 in the works?

Josh Golsen: It’s too early to say. There’s a lot more free and premium content coming for Rhythm Racer 2 over the next two or three months. The classic rock pack featuring Boston and Edgar Winter, the alternative rock pack featuring Filter and The Crystal Method, and The Prodigy pack are all available now. We have songs coming from the All-American Rejects, Kaiser Chiefs and OK Go, too. There’s bound to be a few surprises along the way.

Elianne Halbersberg is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared in Mix, Premier Guitar, Electronic Musician, Audio Media, Ink 19 and many other magazines and websites.

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