The simplest answer is because I'm friends with almost everyone on the team, and I have information from them that wasn't public knowledge. But working for SOE, they couldn't go into a lot of detail with me, because that would represent a serious conflict of interest. The guys that were laid off from SOE that were on that team got a nice severance, but that wouldn't last forever, and was running out for sure.
Before the KS launched, I talked with Brad a lot about general things. Nothing game design specific. He asked me what I thought of their money target for the KS, and I told him straight out that asking for 800k was going to look silly. EVERYONE knows you can't actually make a game for 800k. He fully believed they could operate much in the same way Chris Roberts did with Star Citizen, where they could raise initial capital via KS, and then take the crowd-funding further afterwards. It wasn't beyond realistic IF the KS delivered. We know what happened there.
So the KS fails to fund, but the guys on the team feel they have a solid concept working, and the website funding approach goes forward. I believe they intended all along to take that money and develop the prototype to shop to investors. I'd be very surprised if there isn't a LOT of design documentation somewhere. I've worked with Salim long enough over the years to know he doesn't skimp on docs. The fact that they didn't show you design docs isn't unusual. No game company is going to publish their internal design documentation. I don't know why you'd expect them to do so?
