According to the FAQ for the Kickstarter:
This is a science fiction world, near-future, involving human experiments leading up to a generational space flight. The world is full of conspiracies, mystery, and paranoia. We're writing it with hundreds of characters are involved, so the stories can go in any number of directions, and be focused on any aspect of the world: adults, teens, romance, mystery, action, thriller, etc.
And... they've thrown in the towel after being 1/3 funded with a month to go
. I hope they elaborate a bit more later on their reasoning, but I suspect that the people involved probably had other projects pulling at them, and couldn't afford to reserve space for something that might happen.
My main thing with that is that is that attempting to invoke writer interest is a pretty big risk. Most people write fanfics specifically for works that they enjoy, any project like this is going to have to have source material that emotionally connects with people enough to want to involve themselves in it. Creating a world for the express purpose of fanfic could, be interesting, but it could also fall flat if people don't find the world interesting enough on its own merits to want to write about it.
Reaction Image Repository

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marionjensen/massive-fiction-project-three-novellas-and-story-s
This is an interesting concept. Basically, three established authors are pledging to collaborate on a work and then release it as Creative Commons Attributed so that people can freely write their own commercial fiction using the established universe.
I disagree a bit with their assertion that fanfiction is illegal in general, but they have a good point that it's difficult to sell fanfic commercially without filing off a lot of serial numbers.