作者：Matthew Wasteland

第一轮：火鸡、火腿和瑞士奶酪三明治

“新的火鸡+火腿瑞士奶酪三明治将为已经十分受欢迎的火腿和Swiss产品增添美味的火鸡。全球的食客们定会因这种全新配料——火鸡增加到已经很成功的产品中而兴奋。火鸡+火腿和瑞士奶酪将吸引原来的火腿瑞士奶酪三明治粉丝，以及其他寻找美味三明治的人。

从上面这段话中，我们可以理解为你是在火腿瑞士奶酪三明治中增加了火鸡这一配料。“变化不大”这种方法有时候挺管用，但并不会有太多消费者会为此兴奋。我认为你应该去想想你的三明治与市场上其他人贩售的套餐究竟有何区别。我们并不只是在与其他三明治竞争，在这个年代，人们可能只喜欢吃热狗或者比萨。

那好，我们再换一种。

eggs_ham_sandwich(from comptoirsdefrance)

第二轮：Mindblower

“由一个三明治小团队12家独家秘制研发而成的产品，Mindblower将让消费者重新定义三明治概念！Mindblower含芝麻酱、腌秋葵等独特配方，其蕃茄摇滚乐式的包装定能让普通三明治消费者备受震撼！”

这是一个有趣的说明。我们当然会被你的大胆设计所打动，我们也欣赏你冒险创新的勇气。我们也可以看到它吸引消费者打破购买常规三明治，体验新感觉的主张。但是，这种设计似乎含有一些未经检验的元素，这正是问题所在。特别需要注意的是，这种红通通的蕃茄色外包装可能会让那些不习惯食用鲜红或桃红色食物的消费者反感。

第三轮：Metasandwich

“Metasandwich不仅仅是三明治而已——它实际上是一个强大而易用的美食创造平台。我们的动态三明治装配系统，三明治柜台支持消费者分配和重新分配自己实时定制的三明治。不喜欢鳄梨？那就可以去掉鳄梨。可以增加两片奶酪，或者外加一片生菜。之后，就可以上网与好友分享你自制的三明治作品啦！Metasandwich是混搭时代的标配午餐！”

好，我们理解了。我们喜欢这里的用户创造内容策略，以及支持每位消费者获得所需体验的理念。这听起来就像是这种产品一定可以热卖并且在获得粉丝后就可以维持销售局面的点子。

与此同时，我们的设计总监带来了新理念：我们可以支持这种系统应该容纳的成百上千万种融合。如果有人不想在自己的三明治上加肉，并因此获得糟糕体验了该怎么办？我认为我们应该建立一些控制系统——设置一些可自定义的三明治，以及一些不可自定义的三明治，这样无论他们怎么做，用户最终都只会得到美味的三明治。我们还应该加上一则声明，我们无法保证用户调整后的三明治就一定美味。我已经聘请我们法律部门解决这些问题，他们可以提供一些如何处理这些情况的额外建议。

同时，针对粉丝社区的推销也要有趣。你提到与好友分享三明治作品的理念——这让我们想到Twitter和Facebook！如果你可以在这一理念中推进更多社交互动那就太棒了。

第四轮：SandwichTown

“SandwichTown是一个围绕制作和食用三明治的广泛乐趣而设计的连网娱乐体验。在SandwichTown中，消费者可以参与同好友组队执行不同任务，分配自己的三明治等挑战，例如收割小麦，揉面，烘焙面包等。消费者可通过一系列微交易层面获得花生黄油、对角线切削等高级三明治选项。

我们首创的‘三明治即服务’模式推崇的是在制作三明治过程中的每个环节推出附加销售内容。Pro Basic月订阅关卡将向用户开放佐料站权限，支持他们无限量使用芥末，提前获得即将上市的配料，以及有别于普通棕色盘的蓝色塑料盘。Pro Premium关卡则提供一种加强级服务。试试今天的SandwichTown吧——你所有的好友都在使用！”

这让三明治听起来像是一款富有粘性的应用。你认为自己多久能够令验证概念的动态三明治引擎顺利运行？有没有考虑过整合一些云战略？

在我们开始制作之前要注意：虽然我们确实是以进步的角度来考虑，但也要注意核心用户，以及我可能够简化了三明治体验的问题。当然，我们需要庞大而多样的用户，但我们不想疏远硬核三明治食客。只要确保你为这些消费者提供了价值。除此之外，你可能还可以提供一些最简单的火腿瑞士奶酪三明治。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

If we pitched food the same way we pitched games

By Matthew Wasteland

Pitching. It’s rarely a pleasant experience. In this humor column reprinted from the October 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine, Matthew Wasteland shares how sometimes a very simple core concept can become lost.

Round 1: Turkey, Ham and Swiss

“The new Turkey, Ham, and Swiss sandwich will add the delicious flavor of turkey to the already popular Ham and Swiss product. Eaters across the globe will thrill at the addition of a new ingredient — turkey — to this already proven combination. Turkey, Ham, and Swiss will appeal to established fans of Ham and Swiss sandwiches, as well as anyone else looking for a good sandwich.”

Thanks for your pitch. If we’re not mistaken, all you’ve done is taken a Ham and Swiss sandwich and added turkey to it. “More of the same” works sometimes, but there isn’t really a lot for consumers to get excited about here. I’d encourage you to think about what really differentiates your sandwich from the other lunch options in the marketplace today. We’re not just competing with other sandwiches anymore; in these unprecedented times, people are just as likely to eat hot dogs or even pizza.

We appreciate the time you took to put this together — come back to us once you have a better hook.

Round 2: The Mindblower

“Developed in secret for over 12 years by a small team of sandwich industry mavericks, The Mindblower will make consumers rethink everything they know about sandwiches! The Mindblower’s unique combination of tahini, pickled okra, and Pop Rocks in a tomato basil wrap will punch past the jaded, cynical mind of the average sandwich consumer and hit them straight in the gut!”

That’s a very interesting approach. We definitely responded to the boldness of your design, and we like that you’re willing to take on some risk in pursuit of innovation here. We can see the appeal of getting customers to break out of the “been there, done that” sandwich routine and experience something new. However, there do seem to be certain unproven elements in the design, which are a cause for concern. Particularly, we zeroed in on how the reddish color of the tomato basil wrap might put off consumers who aren’t used to eating light red or pinkish foods.

Additionally, because this concept is so off-the-wall, you may want to think about allowing people the opportunity to customize certain elements of the experience to their own preferences. Maybe somebody wants the Mindblower sandwich except on rye bread instead of in a wrap, for example. User customizability is, of course, a big part of our strategy right now.

Round 3: Metasandwich

“Metasandwich is much more than a sandwich — it’s actually a powerful and easy-to-use meal-creation platform. Our dynamic sandwich-assembly system, The Sandwich Counter™, allows customers to arrange and rearrange their own custom sandwiches on the fly — in real time. Don’t like avocado? Don’t put avocado on there. Go crazy and add two slices of cheese, or an extra piece of lettuce. Then, share your personal sandwich creations with your friends using the internet! Metasandwich is lunch for the remix generation.”

Okay, we get this. We like the user-generated content strategy here, and the idea that every customer can have the experience they want. It sounds like something that could really take off and sustain itself once the community gathers steam.

At the same time, our design director brought up a good point: We would need to support all the millions of possible combinations that this system would allow. What if someone didn’t put any meat on their sandwich and then had a bad experience? I think we’d have to build in some controls — have some of the elements of the sandwich customizable, and others not — so that no matter what they do, users are always left with a good-tasting sandwich. We’ll also want to put a disclaimer on there saying that modifications to the sandwiches are not necessarily endorsed by us and that we can’t guarantee anything about how they taste. I’ve CCed our legal department here so they can offer some additional suggestions on how to move forward with this.

In the meantime, the community aspect of the pitch was intriguing. You mentioned sharing sandwich creations with friends — that reminded us a lot of Twitter and Facebook! It’d be great if you could push more of those social aspects into the concept.

Round 4: SandwichTown

“SandwichTown is a connected entertainment experience designed around the wide-ranging fun of making and eating sandwiches. In SandwichTown, customers are challenged to assemble their own sandwich by rounding-up and coordinating groups of friends to perform various tasks, such as gathering wheat, kneading dough, and baking loaves of bread. Advanced sandwich options such as peanut butter or diagonal cuts are gated through a series of microtransaction tiers.

Our pioneering ‘sandwich as a service’ model allows us to upsell a premium experience at every step of the sandwich-creation process. The Pro Basic monthly subscription level gives lunch customers access to a condiment bar with unlimited mustard, exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming ingredients, and special blue plastic trays instead of ordinary brown ones. The Pro Premium level offers an even more enhanced level of service (exact features TBD). Try SandwichTown today — all your friends are doing it!”

Yes, we like where you’ve gone with this. It feels like sandwich-as-sticky-app (and we don’t mean because of the grape jelly, ha ha). How soon do you think you could get together a proof-of-concept dynamic sandwich engine up and running? Have you thought about integrating some sort of cloud strategy?

Just one note before we start production: While we do think of this as the way forward, a concern was raised about the core audience and the perception that we might be dumbing down the sandwich experience. Of course we want a big, diverse audience, but we don’t want to alienate hardcore sandwich-eaters. Just make sure you’ve got a value proposition for those customers, too. Maybe in addition to all this, you could also offer something like, I don’t know, maybe a simple Ham and Swiss? （source：gamasutra）