I'm a graduate student wanting to start an indie game company

Hello,

I'm a graduate student (getting an MBA with a graduate certificate in Project Management) and I've been working with a group of fellow students (when we were all undergraduates) on a indie pc game. This game has been our capstone project. It's been slow going but we're trudging through (there's six of in total).

We want to start our business officially now that we're getting closer to the finish line. I've been trying to do some research but I really don't know what goes into starting a company, what would be the best type of company, or if there are any issues that can come up.

I tried out legalzoom, a website I saw advertised around the internet, but it was over 700.00 to file where I live in King County Washington. I was hoping it would a bit less since I'm the only one able to contribute (pretty much paying for everything).

We started off creating a final project and then we started to collaborate with a local company who donated their license to us to use their products in our game. We're doing it for free in our spare time using free programs like Blender and Unity.

We also have a local game company that wants to help us complete our project. They're friends of the business we're creating this game for.

My questions:

Does anyone have any advice on where to look to start an indie game design company?

Is it better to file for a license or should we try to form an LLC first?

Are there any indie game developers that have any advice on how they started their company?

How did you copyright your IP?

I'm sure there are a lot more questions I should be asking but I'm hoping someone can point out my ignorance and show me the light!

TL:DR What's the easiest and cheapest way to start an indie game company?