[MUD-Dev] "USPs"

[ceo]

Michael Sellers wrote:

> A "Unique Selling Point."  As Rozak says, something many MMPs are
> a bit short on.

> ...

> Several years ago at e3 when FPS games were the rage, I heard a
> marketing person say, "our shooter is *completely* different from
> the rest -- we have entirely different kinds of weapons."  Meaning
> crossbows instead of shotguns as I recall.  Okay, maybe that's
> unique (maybe not too).  But does having a razorgun or chaingun or
> gluegun really change the gameplay experience for the average
> player?

> Then consider: in terms of the current and upcoming crop of MMOs,
> what aspects of these are *truly* Unique Selling Points?  In what

This is a frequent problem in equity-investment: USP is one of those
dangerously trivial summaries of a non-trivial concept. Many people
take the phrase as the definition (anything that is "unique" and is
a "selling point" is a USP).

Meanwhile, the real point (as you point out here) is, of course,
that a USP is something that is

  unique in a way that matters to customers

and

  a selling-point that is already/will be used to make actual sales

I find it hard to believe that the game cited would have a marketing
campaign with the headline (or tagline) "Shoot using a crossbow!",
as if that were all that mattered about the game - yet that's what a
real USP is, something that *on it's own* will make a random person
become a customer.

I think a lot of people understand it as "anything that might make a
wavering potential customer sway towards purchasing".

(PS: 3 replies in ten minutes. I appear to have de-lurked! Better
run away back to my dark corner... ;))

Adam M
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