Ego - why developers need it.

Sometimes people make out developer egos to be the big evil in a software project. They worry about things like the quality of the work and give harsh critics to developers of their contributions, be it code, documentation, music or artwork. Sometimes a person may want to work on a project, but feel that no matter what they do it is not good enough to get on any project and that they will not be recognized for what they contribute. Many of these people just give up, feeling that the lead developer will not be happy with their work no matter what they do.
They feel they have just wasted all that time working on things that will not be used for the project. I know, because I have been there along with several other people. It was one of the things that motivated me to start my own project rather than try to work on some one else's project.
I know that a lot of projects wish they had more people developing on the project, but at the same time have such high expectations for the quality of contributions that they do not find what they are looking for. Wograld is more of an entry level project. The art and code needed is pretty simple. Just a semester of C or the equivalent experience is all that is needed for programming. For art you just need to be able to use a simple editor like the gimp. A lot of the artwork is simply editing some sprites so they look better. The code also has a lot that is fairly simplistic. The time consuming part of the code is getting up to speed on the current code base and what it does, and then making some modifications. That is much easier than trying to write the game from scratch.
I think too much critic can turn otherwise good developers away from a project. Many people have their self-confidence sabotaged at work. They do not need more of this when they come home to do a hobby project. I believe developers should receive a lot of praise for the things they do right. It encourages them to work harder on the project, putting in more time and effort and producing more results.