Agreed so hard.

The lack of design documentation really set off a lot of bells for me. If you've got more than just a premise, you're going to have some design documents. Mechanics. Level design. Gear design. Story arcs. Something. As much as (more than?) anything else, game design is an engineering endeavor, and if you don't have base design documents for everyone to contribute to and work off of, you're not making a game. At best, you're involved in group-effort daydreaming.

And the money thing, holy crap. Unless they're expecting everyone to work for free and primarily use their own equipment, there's no way $250k would cover their expenses. Not even close.