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#1 You are best off chatting with a lawyer, especially if you have a 'real' team in place. It depends on how you want to structure things, and where you are putting together the business (Utah law differs from California law, which differs from Italian law...) An LLC is a little more expensive to put together, but it provides you some smaller measure of protection against liability, and has very easy handling of taxes.

I can only speak from my own experience --- I creatted a sole proprietorship. I still had a "team," but for now when you speak of Rampant Games you are ultimately talking about ME. We have zero employees - everyone works on contract (and for peanuts... unless you are me, in which case you actually pay money for the privilege... at least thus far).

Assuming you are in the U.S., hit the web for your state's Chamber of Commerce page and find out the details. You will also need to hit your local city hall or website to find out your local requirements as well.

For me, both licenses together cost around $85 a year IIRC.

You don't really have to do that until you start making money under the company name, though. Theoretically you can do business under your own name in most places (that I know of) and you don't need any license.

Hope that helps you get started.

#2 Do you have a product yet? It only costs a few hundred bucks to start a company, but unless you're prepared to use that power and deal with the responsibilities, I don't recommend doing it just yet. Just because you have a team and a website doesn't mean that you need to start a company if your game is months or even a year or two off.

And secondly, if you have to ask, you really need to read up on companies and such, because there's a lot of laws out there that will shape your decision to become one, and the type you choose. If you walk into it blindly, then you're inviting a lot of trouble on yourself.

www.sba.gov There's information and links to more information on this site. It's a good place to start researching. Hope that helps.

#3 Something I my teacher in Advertising Class said, You have 3 years, after 3 years of making no money(or enough money) you are considered a hobbiest and not a company. So if you don't meet the requirments yet, take the time to build yourself up first.

#4 I recommend Game Design by Bob Bates for you to read through. It goes through the basics, but it also comes with the more complicated document templates - like the pitch document and game design document, with some charts like risk management.

And what do you know? It's packaged with Ken Finney's book on amazon.com...

Coincidence? Yes. ^^