I own that game and I can't seem to remember all the faults as mentioned. I do remember the "cool cam" which was featured in demo mode. But far from being the technical failure looking at how the graphics have been upgraded and mods contributed I'd say this game is a roaring success. Maybe there's a lesson there to learn. Don't believe all you read. As a user the bugs mentioned did not distract from the game & game play. And just because there are some failures in the product doesn't mean you can't make money off it.
The point, as I understood it, was that the Cool Cam was instrumental in turning the project from a failure to a success.
From the last para: "Tim's "cool cam" saved European Air War. It went from a money-leaking embarrassment to a top-tier release for MicroProse. The weekly meetings got easier, more developers were brought on, and the team managed to put together one hell of a game."
One of the huge advantages of doing your own projects is you can focus on real value and not the shiny things that make a suit's eye light up.
This "Cool Cam" story has a lot in common with the Bike Shed story. In both cases the no-vision executives latch onto small mostly-pointless things they can understand. Real users are much smarter.
My reading was that the Cool Cam galvanised the management and the dev team, when they were feeling pretty stuck. It gave them a taste of the coolness that the project would be when done.
I sometimes do something a little similar, say I'm bogged down in something frustrating and complex, knocking up a protoype of something cool can breathe new life into a project. But its entirely possible that you're better at keeping yourself motivated and focused (without shiny things) than I am.
Galvanized is definitely the most positive way to read into it. This wasn't a fun project by the developers. This was for the executives who were torturing the developers like cats do mice. One smart developer put a ball of yarn out to keep the cats busy long enough to get the cheese.
This was a hack for their crappy executive problem. Exactly what you can avoid on your own projects. I totally agree side projects can be a good for motivation, but it's probably a bad sign if it's necessary to the life of the project.
I would agree if there was a flood of them, but I thought this one quite appropriate. Its unusual in not being just some awful random mistake, but a possibly instructive lesson in turning around a murky situation.
The bigger threat has to be xkcd, which will probably hit the front page every other day now ;)
Check the Hi-Res terrains in the link below.
- http://www.xmission.com/~mmagleby/eaw/downloads.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Air_War
Makes me want to find the disks right now to use the mods and look for those pesky bugs!