[Chris Fultz]

This is a great post and critical.

We create a rubric of key parameters for the game and then rate them on importance from 1 - 5. The key is that you must create a spread of values, or you are wasting your time with this step.

By forcing ourselves to put a value on each item, we can then know where to focus our efforts and where we can compromise. We compromise on the items of lower value and stay firm on the higher value items.

If you rate everything a 5, then you have specified a robot you cannot design and build, because you have nothing to make trade-offs with. You will try to do everything perfectly and end up doing nothing well.