Phoenix Project Update: Sunday, August 4, 2013

Phoenix Project Update: Sunday, August 4, 2013
Doctor Tyche

Greetings and Salutations

My apologies for the delays in missing last weeks update, so we are merging two weeks update into one. Yes, it is I, Doctor Tyche, once again joining you for this update. Now, most people are expecting some topic related to the Kickstarter, and this is such an update, but not in the manner expected. This week the focus is on Missing Worlds Media itself.

When we began Missing Worlds Media, the company itself, the goal was to protect the hard work from The Phoenix Project. However, the original company was a simple partnership set up as a Missouri DBA, consisting of five people, myself, Segev, Sithrose, AvelWorldCreator and Terwyn. This made us very uncomfortable, especially as time went on and more and more work was done. In effect, people were laboring away for the benefit of this small group, from a legal angle, so we eventually formed a corporation out of Missouri, tied to our original partnership. But the corporate laws in MO still gave us issues, we could expand the group, but it would still remain a small group and not inclusive as we wished. At the beginning of July, we made the decision to fix that.

Starting last week, Missing Worlds Media has been operating under a new corporation, this time in Washington State. To avoid double taxation, we let our Missouri corporation lapse, and used the original partnership paperwork as a bridge to transition to the Washington corporation. WA's laws regarding shareholders allows us to do what we've wanted to for a long time - to have Missing Worlds Media be an employee-owned company.

We have been preparing for this transition for awhile. Quinn recently took on the role of Lead Developer, bringing her organizational skills to bear. Once this was done and established, as of Monday the MWM director positions were retired and we were repositioned. Segev is reducing his involvement with MWM in order to pursue a masters degree in Science Management, a process which will take two years and occupy huge amounts of his time. This weekend, under the new corporate structure, the current volunteers as of last Friday, those who have sunk months into working on The Phoenix Project, will be voting into place the new company transition President, who will be then leading the structural changes needed to position us as a fully employee-owned-company.

This is a particularly stress-filled period for us, one where it is, sadly, easy to jump to conclusions when presented with partial data. We had to already deal with one incident where someone saw that we had let the Missouri corporation lapse and without knowing of the original partnership nor the reincorporation paperwork, jumped to the worst possible solution. That is partially why this update involving our business, instead of our game.

Until we did this, it was, at least for me personally, uncomfortable. All of these people sinking their hearts in to the game, which would only benefit five people in the end while operating under the existing business structure, it was not right. We made an error in our initial corporate setup by failing to check the laws of Missouri first all those months ago, and now we have fixed that mistake. We came out of the community, and exist for the community. And now it is being legally bound to those able and willing to put their heart and souls into bringing this to the community.

We began this grand adventure because we lost our home of so many years. Now we have the last piece of the legal structure being put down, ready in time for the Kickstarter.

Missing Worlds Media, Inc, building better worlds for you, together.