It's not necessary, but it does help because it kind of back ups the currency's value when it tends to drop after the initial hype. There should be enough incentive to mine even after the difficulty has gone up a little bit and miners head back to Bitcoin (like current situation of either NMC, IXC or I0C).

If you guys want to collaborate in any way, I'm here. I have done some C(++) programming, but I haven't even looked at the sources yet.