Success in this complex market hinges on a deep understanding of the gaming industry. To effectively communicate the who and why to executive leadership, I needed to build customer personas that were easily digestible. I distilled the market into 3 primary customer types:

• Gamers: The end-user who pays for the software, hardware. Some gamers evolve into influencers and content-creators in the space.
• Publishers: They decide which games to fund, and have authority to make strategic or budgetary decisions for games.
• Developers: The creative and engineering minds that create the games. They are the end-users of our tools.

Each of these groups play a vital role, and understanding their motivations was key to focusing our efforts.

Gamers

When profiling gamers, we leveraged existing resources to understand their motivations and behaivors. I find Quantic Foundry and their Gamer Motivational Profile research to be some of the best public data for developers because they have incredible psychographic data about why gamers play. Quantic Foundry takes 12 gameplay motivations and simplifies it down to 3 kinds of motivational profiles. This data helped us identify which gamers align best with the value proposition of Dolby Vision.

Gamer perception would also be important for our first games. I collaborated with our research teams to pinpoint which sub-genres of games they felt would be most impacted by Dolby Vision. Our research identified the Horror and FPS genres as prime candidates for Dolby Vision’s benefits.

I also utilized Newzoo’s gamer segmentation profiles to understand broader gaming behaviors. We identified“The Ultimate Gamer” and “Hardware Enthusiasts” customer segments aligned closely with what we would be able to deliver with our MVP.

Now we had a strong identity and psychographic profile of our ideal gamer. They played FPS and MMO sub-genres, were following the latest trends in technology, gamed with friends often, and most importantly craved the highest quality visuals possible and were willing to spend extra money to do so.

Publishers

Researching publishers was challenging due to the small number of relevant players creating games in our target market. For this reason I took a highly personalized approach, conducting in-depth interviews with industry professionals to understand their specific needs and concerns.

We quickly heard the same feedback over and over. Publishers are primarily focused on the bottom line, so adopting a technology needed to show a ROI, or be backed by a co-marketing deal. If we could demonstrate that developers were able to save time, or present a clear marketing plan, they were far more likely to adopt Dolby Vision. This gave me the signal to advocate increased spend on marketing budgets for gaming at Dolby, as it would help us win large gaming franchises.

We also learned that a lions share of revenue came from console, and that they were less likely to support PC only features without some sort of larger co-marketing deal. Support on PC was nice, but not necessary for an initial adoption.

Developers

Having been a game developer since 2008, I had a strong understanding of this persona. However I knew the importance of gathering broader insights whenever possible. I collaborated with our research team to see if we could gain any new perspectives. While this took time to gather, I had to rely on my instincts to manage the ongoing work and planning in parallel. Fortunately, the research largely confirmed my initial assumptions.

Many of the senior developers we wanted to target were “lifers” — people who had played games their entire life, and spent their professional careers making games. This research described me to a pretty shocking degree, as it reflected my own journey. A pattern emerged from the research: many senior developers started out as “Ultimate Gamers,” as described by Newzoo, before transitioning into game development and staying put regardless of the job instability that the AAA industry is known for.

Because of past experiences of not being efficient enough and watching entire studios shut down by publishers, these seasoned developers are cautious when adopting new technologies that could reduce their precious time. They are only willing to invest in technology if can significantly reduce their workload or if has a proven track record of increasing the quality bar. The “quality bar” is a term often used in developer circles, to refer to the minimum standard of quality set by other games that must be met to compete successfully. If you cannot hit this quality bar, your efforts will not have a positive ROI.

Developers frequently cited existing technology middleware packages like WWISE and Bink as tools that consistently helped them raise the quality bar and save time. Although these middleware packages did not directly compete with us in enhancing HDR, they served as successful models for us to adopt.

The developer research highlighted what our technology needed to achieve: a clear demonstrable impact on both the quality bar and efficiency.

The Strategy

After performing research developers and gamers, we synthesized a strategy that was both ambitious and achievable, while leveraging Dolby’s core strengths:

• Focus on the Games That Matter: in 2019, there were over 7000 new games released on PC alone, but only a small percentage captured the lion’s share of attention. We should focus on FPS and MMOs aligning with our ideal gamer customer persona first before branching out to other gameplay genres.
• Build a Marquee Title: To create a powerful showcase for Dolby Vision, we needed a large marquee title rather than diluting our efforts across smaller games.
• Leverage Partnerships to Build Volume: Dolby had not been successful marketing directly to consumers in the past. Instead focus on building partnerships with larger publishers who can scale our game library and tell our story.

These constraints necessitated a focused and strategic approach. We couldn’t brute-force our way into thousands of games. Instead, we had to be selective, forging partnerships with developers and publishers their success was confirmed — a tall order in the unpredictable AAA game industry.

To kick off the project, I crafted a clear product outcome statement:

“Thousands of games will be playable in Dolby Vision on gaming consoles, prompting users to seek out Dolby Vision equipment”

Achieving this outcome required securing a gaming console and a critical mass of games that mattered. Our strategy dictated forming a key partnership with a major publisher/console manufacturer, and leverage their developer platform to integrate Dolby Vision across numerous games.

I hypothesized that if Dolby Vision were a launch feature for a new console, it would attract high-profile games and garner earned media. However, with only 18 months until the launch of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the clock was ticking. We needed to move with urgency and concentrate all of our efforts to ensure success.

After getting alignment on this strategy with executive leadership, marketing, and engineering, we devised a solution for a real-time Dolby Vision Gaming console that hit our target sub 1 millisecond rendering budget. Simultaneously, I focused on identifying key partners and titles to bring this vision to life.