Ok that didn't work, one last try...
Quote: "As for other people like yourself finishing games before me, it really makes no difference to me. Games are so wildly different I could never judge the potential success of Carnage against someone elses game."
I said that to take a shot at preventing you from stopping,but it seems there is more to it.
Quote: "I still get lost in the wonder of the games I could create. I have many ideas, one or two of which I think would be far more likely to succeed than Carnage."
I know what you mean, but am not convinced that what it seems is so...
Are you more close to finishing Carnage than these other ideas? If there are lack of assets for Carnage now, what makes the situation different with these other ideas? What will you do if your next idea fails? Will you start again?
Why did you think up creating Carnage, is the reason no longer a good one? Did Carnage fail to entertain players or did Kick Starter fail to attract investors?
Did anyone actually play the game yet? Did they have the choice to play? Were enough people given the choice to see it, to find your game on Kick Starter; did they have much money to part? Do they really know how to invest?
If I remember correctly FPSC reloaded just about got through on the side... I think because of the low population of those in the community multiplied by their budgets.
Who is the real Carnage player, is he/she on Kick Starter? Do they have 5 minutes in a week for sites like Kick Starter? "Ooo what shall I kick start this week". Are they developers at TGC or are they hardcore gamers browsing game portals for strategies and walkthroughs who couldn't give a damn how you made it? I know guys who only visit 4 places; the bathroom, kitchen, the pub and Call of Duty; Internet Explorer / Firefox always needs updating because the icons really get clicked, only to download a COD update, these guys won't find you like that; they probably think Kick Starter is a welfare agency. The world is huge, KS is just a small part of it and these kinds of players need time to find your needle in the haystack.
Who are people to judge, with what education do they judge with? Yeah it's a different medium, but a lot of XFactor judges put through artists who become failures, countless times, year after year. Why, because they look like they can make it?
The ones who succeed are the ones who got misjudged and pursue their goals on their own.
Quote: "I simply can't develop this full time. I have bills to pay so what I do by day needs to pay them."
Understandable; don't want you to end up on the street. Sometimes, just sometimes, focusing on such things can consume your life.
I am virtually unemployed by choice because I personally think that an hour working on a game is worth more than 10 hours all day trying to pursuade clients to help themselves by shutting up and listening to advice... There is less compitition for 3D game developers than there are for graphic designers.
As little as 20,000 people handing me over a fiver for many hours of fun, all for the one or two years of effort building the game gives me £100,000 and lots of priceless experience. 20,000 copies would be a failure somewhat, but I would have earned 4 times the amount I would have done focusing on the bills. If I only make £1000 for my all effort, I still have my health, and will have one of the most distinctive near AAA game engines on earth and thousands of website visitors to play with; a new game all with a couple of configuration file tweaks and a change of a couple of shaders and storyline; then will new ideas be easy to implement. But without the continuation, the outlook is completely different, you end up re-programming more buttons and collision checks, pushing more vertices working on low level stuff in hope of another idea to work.
I know how long gamedev takes, but focusing on ways to cut down the number of steps and hours needed may be worth a little more consideration, just a little more now. Any surplus from work could be used to buy back time lost through content purchase and outsourcing. With but £50 you can buy quite a lot of 3D models nowadays; I can testify. There's freelancers all over the world desperate to make some textures for you right now, they are queuing up on Elance and Freelancer for a chance to work on something as interesting as a game; although outsourcing requires skill and practice.
Perhaps cutting down some features here and there; sometimes features are given more attention than what they are worth. Focusing on building 2 levels, a few weapons and multiplayer; like what Counter Strike did, get a small number of people playing then go from there, use them as valuable sources of feedback. You could open source part of it, get others to make games under your domain of control; who wants to rebuild all of what you did from scratch? Whilst you focus on your day to day work; people could log in and play around a bit, you may be able to even supply MOD tools, maybe an API if you felt like taking the MOD route.
Once you cover the rent, the primary focus should be the precise next step in profitability; which is sitting on your computer. It is there, it was on Lee Bamber's computer; if he stopped half way to start other ideas, would any of us be here on this forum?
Starting a new project means another 1 - 2 years before anything fun. I am sure even with just 8-12 hours per week, something playable would come out of Carnage in 6 months.
If I were you and were sick of the sight of Carnage and wanted a fresh idea, I would use the engine under Carnage for it. It is all about the engine; you can just change the body work.