Hi lamefun!
Let's finish the game up first and advertise after the beta.
Sure, I've never seen that as a good idea.
This is probably what did Unvanquished in: developer burnout.
I can't talk for others but I will give my own example. In my life I have three major occupations: my job, unvanquished related development, and photography. I always do unvanquished-related development and photography after my job because without my job I will not have my house neither something to eat. So after the job, comes unvanquished and photography. I mainly photography life events (wedding, pregnancy…), and people can't wait too much for this kind of photography, so it comes first. This August I had a wedding, so I'm working on the photos: the family is waiting and I don't want make them waiting too much. At the end of September, I will have an ordination to photograph. Between I will probably find two weeks to hack unvanquished stuff a bit more, or to write some news. After that, once October is done, I will probably have no one major photography event before the next spring and I will probably be able to focus on Unvanquished on my spare time. So, even without burnout, things are slow on my end because I'm just busy.
I haven't hear about someone having burned out. Perhaps have you noticed kharnov being silent since a long time now. Kharnov have taken some distance to focus on his life but not because of a burnout. I exchanged some mail with him last month for his birthday and he is fine.
The real problem is people being busy. Some people are complaining for being too busy, and are complaining because not finding more time for Unvanquished as they would. As a good example, Supertanker just talked today on the development channel about that desire to find more time for Unvanquished. `Ishq looks very busy. That's clearly not the sign of a burnout.
But that's a real risk: if this busy moment is going to last for a too long time, some people will just move on something else. So, yes, we must care a lot of what's happening, but I haven't seen any sign of burnout yet. The major risk is not the risk of burn out, just the risk to have our lives eaten by our jobs.
I told in some comments I want to write some blog post, I will do, I have more than one to write, I'm just very busy, as everyone else.