I'm glad to see people are making use of this thread.
Darn it all people, lets get started. As olantern said, we need a plan, this link ( http://www.sba.gov/ ) tells us what info we need to form that plan. We need to find someone who has already formed a business, get them to help us avoid the pitfalls. I know some people, perhaps they'll give me a few pointers, I suggest you all do the same. We need someone or several somones to step-up and get this underway. Olantern, if you know anyone who can help in corporate law, now would be the time to tell us. We also need accountants, marketing experts, and we either need the Titan Network to step up its game and form a virtual workspace for this company or we need to take it somewhere else. We also need to do some digging and find out for sure just how many of the "sticks" in this bundle that NCsoft owns lock, stock, and barrel. This is happening folks. I'll post again in 24 hours, those onboard had best say so. Keep in mind all, this may be unneeded, or it may be our last chance. But no matter what we need to have the outline done well before November if we are to stand a ghost of a chance if all else falls through.
In a nutshell, this what needs to be done. Notice all the different steps that ultimately need to be taken. My concern is that new businesses normally don't start up with less than three months of planning. We are trying to do something on an expedited timetable here, and I'm not sure how successful we can be at that. Regardless, we need to start scouting the ground, if not laying groundwork, now. As Castorcorvus pointed out, ideally, we need someone with business formation and administration experience to pitch in here. (Don't look at me; I've only ever worked for the government and for academic institutions.)
I strongly recommend that everyone take a look at the SBA website linked in Castorcorvus's post. One set-up I saw mentioned there that I hadn't even considered is the idea of running something as a cooperative. I wouldn't normally even think of that kind of organization, which is rarely even mentioned in law school business courses, but it does get around one problem I mentioned in my post on entity choice. As I noted there, one problem with a "subscribers own the game" structure run as a corporation is that the corporation is constantly having to issue new stock for each new stockholder who joins. This creates the potential for a lot of organizational problems, since ultimate control of a corporation is apportioned by the amount of stock held.
A co-op removes that issue, since it involves owner-customers by definition. Most cooperatives out there sell things like food or physical goods (CostCo and Sam's Club being the best-known examples) or services (like credit unions). I've never heard of anyone even considering running an MMO that way, probably because it would be hard to pay the tremendous start-up costs of an MMO under that system. There are certainly problems with running a co-op. Being organized essentially as a democracy of members makes it difficult to make decisions; when have you ever seen even the forums, a tiny subset of the player population, come close to a reasoned consensus on anything controversial? I shudder to think what would happen if a major balance nerf were required in a game run as a co-op. But, like other organizational forms, it's worth considering.
With regard to help with starting up, choosing a business form, etc., while it's possible to do these things without having representation, it might be necessary for the planned entity, whatever it is, to have lawyers, especially since we're talking about a business that's expressly set up to buy (or develop a successor to) someone else's IP. Of course, legal representation is expensive. However, it
might be possible to get around the cost issue, and get some much-needed counseling on entity choice and possibly IP issues, if the planned entity goes to a legal clinic for representation.
Law clinics are a bit like medical clinics. Normally run through law schools, they involve students, working under the supervision of a professor licensed to practice law, representing actual clients drawn from the public. I used to be one of those professors, supervising in a clinic handling tax disputes. (That clinic was ultimately shut down, and now I teach only "regular" law school classes.) While most clinics are like mine and handle actual disputes, there are also clinics out there that do transactional work, such as starting up small businesses or nonprofits, and the like. Some even do IP work as well. The major advantage of these operations is that they're generally free to the client. While having a student-attorney as your attorney may seem like a bargain-basement option, I can tell you from experience with my own students that they'll usually provide representation at least as good as a regular attorney, partly because they really want the experience (and the grade) and partly because they have more time to work cases than lawyers in practice usually do. Anyway, that may be an option. However, it would require the Undetermined Player Entity to have a locality where it wants to be based in mind. Clinics generally represent "local" groups. Anyway, it's a possibility.
Before even considering anything like that, though, we need to know what this Undetermined Player Entity will do. It does need to be something more than "negotiate with NCSoft"; what happens otherwise if those negotiations are unsuccessful, or if NCSoft isn't interested in negotiating? Developing this kind of plan is a critical, critical thing. We can't do much with regard to law and form until we know how we want to use them.
In an unrelated matter, I am willing to contribute $10 toward the Nursemaid for TonyV position.
