Finding your USP

What makes your game different? What is its USP?

Finding the USP is a fundamental step in defining your key feature set, especially if your concept is intended for a publisher or an investor.

The USP determines that unique mechanism or takes on your genre that are going to make your game stand out from the competition, the reason why players out there will be interested in dedicating their valuable time to your game instead of the many others that they already have or are interested in trying.

To help you understand the idea behind the USP, sometimes also called breakthrough, let's have a look at some widely popular and successful games. The Assassin's Creed franchise came out in 2007 and it revolutionized the action-adventure game genre by introducing its famous parkour mechanic. The ability to traverse on the vertical axis by freely climbing buildings was a fresh and innovative feature and helped set the game apart from its competition. The public response was immensely positive, and despite some major flaws in that original game, Assassin's Creed became one of the biggest game franchises in history.

Another famous example, on a different platform: Supercell's Clash Royale. The core gameplay is based on collecting cards and battling with them in an arena with other players. The game is full of fresh takes on different mechanics, but it has one very clear USP: real-time Player vs Player (PvP). When the game came out in mid-2016, very few mobile games were relying on synchronous PvP. Most titles at the time were either turn-based or real-time vs AI (the other player being controlled by an artificial intelligence). Clearly, it was a consequence of the technical challenges of creating synchronous PvP games on mobile.

Like in any market, an unexplored area is both a risk and an opportunity. Supercell was successful in pushing the boundaries of mobile multiplayer games towards synchronous PVP and created a billion-dollar game in the process.

The USP concept seems to be another one more concerning marketing and sales. Indeed, the two questions: Why should I buy your game? and Why should I play your game? have very similar answers, but as a game designer, your job is to answer the latter. However, most of the time, that will answer the former too!

Exercise
Have you clearly defined the USP for your game concept? Try to add it to your document.
Is it unique enough to make the concept stand out from similar games? 
Do you know any other examples of game franchises that owe their popularity to a specific USP? Think about a few of them and compare their USP with yours.