I've been thinking for a while as to what the true motivation of the Horizon Corporation is and i can't find anything that really sticks. They seem too good to be good guys though. I mean at best they're Knights Templar, well intentioned but fanatical. However in a world of very dark grey/black morality they just don't quite fit in. Horizon group is almost too perfect for my tastes.

The obvious answer to the problem is that Horizon is simply using the mass media to control people and sway their opinions in favor of the corporation and it's agenda and way from anything that could be potentially damaging to the company. But none of this is definite of course because we have no real informational information on Horizon. All we really know is that their media gurus and that they recently took a seat on the Corporate Court, and what does that tell us? Nothing

I opened this thread to prompt discussion on the topic and i'd welcome any theories.

They're actually a hive-mind cult. Don't drink the coolaid

Good is a relative term.

Compared to Aztechnology, unless Horizon really are a breeding pit for insect hives infecting the public with their nefarious schemes - lets be real, they ARE the good guys.

- J.

I suspect otherwise. Out of all the AAAs, Horizon scares me the most.

First, it is suspicious that a AAA would materialize (almost literally) out of nowhere. Of the new players, corps like CATco (already gone and buried) and NEOnet built up from previous AAAs. Wuxing clawed its way up over decades. Horizon seeming just appeared.
Next, there is Cline.
But the nail in the coffin is Consensus.

In my mind, most of the AAA want financial or resource control. A few are perusing other agendas.
But my guess on Horizon is that they're after "Hearts and Minds" control of the population.

I see Horizon as having both Fox news AND CNN as AR programs they offer.

They only appear to care but will play off any side, just so long as they maintain high public opinion.

They won't care about who's lives they ruin with news reports, they will muckrake and such just to get a little more ratings. Heck, a team of shadowrunners might even be hired to plant a story or two if it's been a slow news week.

And who do you think was behind the whole orkxploitation in the media?

Jong-Won Kim. I helped.

I think Deus is behind Horizon.

Horizon is curious about technomancers and Resonance...

Everyone is curious about technomancers and the resonance.

Horizon is interesting to me and I hope there is no ulterior evil A.I., Immortal Elf, or heretofore unmentioned Great Dragon behind it all. I like the idea of a information age company clawing it's way to the top with information age tactics. If their actually "Good" it's only because the rest of the world has gone so bad that being good is a viable marketing strategy.

Yes, but Horizon tends to hire technomancers rather than treat them as subjects for experimentation or objects for persecution (like Mitsuhama). At least, according to the Shadowtalk.

I think Horizon doesn't actually exist and is instead an experiment in global scale disinformation campaigns. (which explains why it sprang up so fast.) That said, I'm not sure who stands to gain from this angle.

Personally, I think that Horizon is a joint venture between the Invae, Tzitzimime, IEs, Great Dragons, and Ancient History...

*Crash*

*Gunfire*

Yeah, one down, two down, three, four... Fatal Funnel bitches! Hahahaha...

*More gunfire*

Five, six, seven, all you bastards are going to heaven... COME GET SOME, MOTHERFUC... AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh...

YOU"LL NEVER SILENCE THE TRU...*Single gunshot*

*Silence*

I was just kidding, Horizon really IS the good guys, seriously. No, really, this really is Tachi, see, I'm using his, er, my account. Trust me.

[in the background]
Move along people, there's nothing to see here... Damn, why are they always so much heavier when they're dead? Dunno, seems to have something to do with the way they just hang like that... Did you catch that Urbal Brawl last night? No, I was watching the Combat Biker finals...
[/background noise]

Doubt that its bug spirits (or any old-school Earthdawn magical entity, for that matter), otherwise Tir Tairngire would have declared them "verboten" instead of giving them a boost post-Crash 2.

OTOH, I don't think that its an AI, either. Too played out, plus its a little harder to conceal that kind of thing post-Crash 2.

Maybe the PR arm of the New Revolution? Nah; wild guess.

I do find it interesting however that, aside from its media pursuits, SR4 mentions that it is also heavily involved in real-estate, land development and pharmaceuticals.

LordHaHa

And what if Horizon is truly good ?

Already the discussion here is sparking whether something like that is possible in the world of Shadowrun.

When everybody suspects they are doing something 'not good' that's actually an incredibly powerful business tool.

After all, when Horizon starts to invest in small farms and businesses that work with biological food, the other companies can't really stay behind. After all Horizon *must* be up to something. And indeed, they were up to something, because the all of a sudden their biological food products are selling like crazy. And the market could never have been better (even for the others).

The other Corps think they have taken a cut of the pie from Horizon, but instead they have actually made the world just a slightly better place to live in, where greed was their goal.

Perhaps the next thing is that Horizon is starting to give good, free, health care to their employees and their families, not asking a single thing in return. Productivity goes up. The other corporations can't really stay behind or they'll look like bad guys.

And so on.

***

To make things very short. In business, contrary to the natural instinct of most businessmen, sometimes the only way to make profit, is to spend more money on people.

Actual real life tests have shown that companies who spend a lot of money increasing the job qualifications of their employees actually don't lose their employees, even though they are now better educated and could probably earn a little more elsewhere.

I was going to post something dull here, about maybe their methods being so profitable that they become good for the money. But that'd be dull.

- Why did they weather the Crash so well? Did they see it coming?
- Market research and trend manipulation at such a scale - something bad has to be in there.
- Being egalitarian doesn't mean being tasteful. They will surely sell all kinds of sleazy and sensational things.
- They're trying to corner the market on edu-simsense. Isn't that terrifying? They give schools educational tools and in return get to totally track what the kids do, like, buy - they'll have a death grip on the minds of the next generation.
- What about the tricky issues in education: orcs are mature at 13, can you force them to stay in school until 18? Horizon will provide a Solution™.
- What about markets that require 'cooperation' to be allowed into? Creating mass-culture (and obedience) in totalitarian states? Hiring an AAA corporation to run your propaganda machine.. brrr..

Insect Spirits make the most sense to me, personally. They sound a lot like an updated version of the Universal Brotherhood. They love putting on a show of being good, honest, upstanding individuals as a cover, and it usually takes quite a while before anyone sees what's really going on. And they love controlling minds (ie, education systems). They learned a lot last time with the Universal Brotherhood, too. This could be them doing it the right way.

If not insect spirits, another forerunner for the Enemy makes a lot of sense. Whatever it is, good guy megacorporations don't exist. Especially in Shadowrun.

This is the number one reason i believe the bugs aren't behind whatever they're doing. I like the idea that they're not really a corporation per se but more of a mass media experiment as pointed out above but that would make me wonder where all their resources are coming from and even bugs dont have those kinds of resources, for christ sakes they're fucking bugs!

In my opinion Deus running Horizon is plausible but highly unlikely.

Plus i think it would be a little bit uncreative (?) of Catalyst to put Bug Spirits behind it all,

Why does Tir Tairngire's backing prove that it's not a bug conspiracy? Elves can't be fooled?

They weren't fooled last time around by the bugs; so unless they got significantly more subtle... (I mean, I wouldn't be terribly surprised)

I'd think that having the Tir's backing implies that whatever it is the Princes are in on it, but that's just my myopic view of the Tir talking there.

OTOH, Horizon could just as easily be run by Hestaby - to counter Lofwyr's (and other undesirables) plans.



I understand what you are saying - but that doesn't change what I wrote. Horizon have yet to display anything TRULY evil, at least nothing on the scale of Aztechnology. Hence my comment.

And they certainly aren't agents for The Enemy - otherwise I doubt they'd be opposing Aztechnology's entry into California. No, Invae are a much more likely explanation, at least if those are they only two. Likewise, Hestaby being behind Horizon is equally likely. Granted Shadowrun isn't intended to be a complete dystopia - so who is to say that the mega wouldn't be her shot at trying to build a mega that is trying to do things differently?

Until they prove otherwise, they are a potential boogeyman. Nothing more.

- J.

Exactly. I seriously doubt the invae -- a very intelligent race -- is going to make the same mistake twice. They learned a lot after the Universal Brotherhood. They've also had zero impact on the Sixth World in SR4 as far as I know other than a few mentions of follow-up references to Chicago and the like. For such a major threat, that's pretty suspicious in and of itself.

The princes are also not immune to being influenced or controlled themselves, despite the dorky remnants of the first edition's Mary Sues (I'm sorry, "immortal elves") being on the council.

Double post, sorry.

The elves, at least the immortal ones, have been around way to long not to know the difference between a corporation and an insect hive. I just don't think it's plausible, i mean it didn't take them long to find out what was going in with the UB did it? And if that is the case, and the bugs are behind Horizon (which i doubt because it would just be poor storytelling on the part of Catalyst and no one has so much've said a word about it in the shadows and Horizon hasn't done anything in the near 5 years its been on the Corporate Court) then it really leads me to wonder what they're up to. The bugs are just human thirsty fiends. their only agenda is too multiply and its a pretty basic instinct which makes me wonder if they were Horizon what'd be taking them so long to put their plan into action, they've been around for close to a decade, of they really wanted to do something it would have been done by now. That's just my two cents.

Let's compare Horizon to a group of runners perhaps. At the front you've got one incredibly talented face. He handles all the public interface, but behind that you've got the grittier side of the team, the muscle, the street sams and the hackers, the private investigators and adepts and magicians and the list goes on and on and on. The only thing we ever see of Horizon is the front man, the face. There are scores and scores of things going on behind closed doors at orizon, i can feel it. And if there's one thing i've learned about Shadowrun it's that if something is locked away and hidden by a corporation so well that we can only speculate as to what it might be we'd better hope we never find out what it actually is. Whatever they're cooking up, it's gonna be huge.

Another important thing to remember in the discussion of Good and Evil is the Fourth Wall. We as players all know that Aztechnology is EVIL, but within the 6th World, they are viewed as a good corporation which takes care of problems and feeds billions. My vote is to wait until I have more information...either see them in plot hooks (like the Azzies and Ares were...) or more source material--like Corp Guide. Once I get that, then I'll make a decision about good and evil.

heh, consensus sounds to me like a data mining project gone "nuclear".

If the new corp book really makes it so such that Horizon is the "good" corp, it wouldn't surprise me. After all, if there is anything consistent with Shadowrun, it is somewhere somehow sometime someone will pull a surprise out of the bag. And the "evil" corps have been such a truism, a good corp could upend the table on our assumptions and drag us out of our comfortable little safehouses like SURGE did.

Honestly, Horizon scares me the most of any corp, not because of all their stuff like
educational softs, media manipulation, etc...No, what scares me about them is...
The Dawkins Group. Seriously: a group that is all about manipulating memes?
That is scary stuff right there. In fact, if they truly master it, then they can
destroy the other Triple A's merely by making the world culture anti-thetical to
them...And, of course, if you think Kline is a good guy, well....read the short
fiction with him in it in Seattle 2072. The guy is not nice..

Well, my bet is on new AIs - Horizon was the first to deal with them, right? Maybe they started to cooperate before 2070, and Horizon has AAA status thanks to AIs' help?
And/or Hestaby - that makes sense. She had her own team of otaku in 2060's, so she could work with AIs and technomancers as well.

I'm going to take a line from the dumpshock wiki...

"The most recent addition to the Corporate Court, Horizon (also known as the Horizon Group) is a AAA megacorporation that focuses on public relations, media, and entertainment. Its main headquarters is in Los Angeles. While Horizon is best known for its presence in all aspects of advertising, marketing, and entertainment, it also has subsidiaries in consumer goods and services, real estate and development, and pharmaceuticals."

The evilness of Horizon is essentially their ability to sway the masses. They can present more favorable advertisements for their products while making it harder for their competitors products to get as much air time. It becomes a self-propagating machine. Horizon, to me at least, is an example of what Google can become and Horizon shows why I am slightly afraid of Google.

Horizon is, to an extent, far more tyrannical and insidious than any of the other AAAs. Aztechnology is fairly obvious in its tyranny, the same can be said about most of the other corps. It's tangible and it's something that easily identified that you can fight against. Horizon, on the outward appearance, doesn't appear evil to most of the public, but the truth is that they have far more control over the thoughts and whims of the general populace than any of the other corps. It's not tangible, it's kind of hard to identify, and how do you fight against what essentially amounts to limited mind control? Using Assassin's Creed as an example.... Horizon is like the Templars.

Hey, he just played his card right given the siuation....Machevellian yes....evil....not really.

So option seems split on:
1) They're Nice!
2) They're Not Nice!

Regardless of where you stand, I'm interested in where you think Horizon came from.
I figure creating a top tier corp takes years, decades of extremely detailed planning, so how do you put together a AAA in an extremely short time, without the other AAAs poaching the building blocks first? Who has the money to make it happen- that isn't already backing another MegaCorp? How do you quietly coordinate the whole thing?
(and weirdly, Cline was formerly a simsense star)

I don't remember seeing a list of major investors- but it would be interesting. Hmmm... Now I'm looking forward to the Corp Guide more than ever!

I don't think the real powers behind the throne matter, Cline's operation proves the business model of spending money on your people, networking in a proactive manner, and generally treating your people well enough you get more out of them. I have no doubt they have a nasty side, the Dawkins Group is just a bit frightening and I don't believe for a second things are all happyness and light for someone that screws up or underperforms for too long but going only by what has been written about them they definately are a lighter shade of grey.

I'm rather impatient for the corporate guide anyways. I wish they'd focus a bit more on the corps instead of all the magical craziness.

"2063—Several high-profile media and industry players in LA meet and draw up the charter for the Horizon Group. They appoint former action simstar Gary Cline as their CEO."

Gary is smart, driven and above all, charismatic. But he's no Knight.
My guess he's also expendable.

PCC also seems to be backing them...

Maybe you have to accept that a group wearing big beards and smoking pipes can be real contenders for world dominance. I mean besides Marx and Engels of course.

Nah, Marx and Engels never had chance. Now the Stalins and Mao's using Marx and Engels as justification for their actions, they were contenders.

However, those espousing Hayek and Adam Smith won that gambit (for now).

If Horizon was fake, wouldn't that give whoever is behind it a second vote on the corporate council? Not sure who gains either but then I would need info on who benefits from how they vote.



I read this like a bunch of smaller time single A corps the AAA corps have been poaching from got together to form a AAA corp. A corp co-op?

Well, if it *was* a single mega behind it, I would think they would have the power to just snap up the company that actually holds the corporate seat; although that would probably spark a corporate war (which could be the reason why they did it this way.)

I thought it more likely that a non-corporate group had formed a corporation for the benefits a seat conferred; or that it's possible that there isn't actually a *seat* at all; there's only 9 on the court, and everyone who knew that fact was in on the deal...

(why the last one would be true I have no idea; I think the first two are the most likely if one were to go with the "Horizon Doesn't Really Exist!" plot.)

That implies they already have a vote - which may not be the case.

- J.

"2063—Several high-profile media and industry players in LA meet and draw up the charter for the Horizon Group. "

I think there is something very off with the phrase right there. A bunch of TedTurners/directors/StudioOwners/MediaGuys don't just get together and found a AAA out of the blue one day(Rupert Murdoch... maybe?).

Now, the story sounds good, I'll give you that, and everyone (especially Horizon) needs a nice origin story. Put it together, and it sounds like start of a disinformation campaign to me.

In the beginning, God created Horizon and Earth...

I'd say there's something buried and hidden in their origin at the very least.

Everything else, well, who really knows when the source of the info is coming from the ones you're trying to get the info on? You can't trust anything or immediately dismiss anything either.

They could technically have more than one vote (there are 13 seats and 10 triple-A corporations).

Only Seven of those of are Guaranteed: Ares, ORO, JRJ International, Mitsuhama Computers, Keruba, BMW, and Shiawase

You'll notice that several of those are holding corporations or wholly owned subsidiaries of the megas. Of these, JRJ International and BMW are both feasibly buyable (as has happened several times with JRJ.) which would transfer control of that guaranteed seat. Good Luck getting BMW from a dragon.

I'm sorry to say it but their is NO WAY, Horizion got where it is by being all candy and sugercain. Their something worse then the azzys and the bug spirts combined, trust me.
You don't make your bussines controlling what people think unless you've got an agenda, might not even be a "evil" one. Their either Dues or someone with a similer mindset, trust me.
Scary part, they'll get away with it....
Every other group out their with a world ending scheme has be refuted, or at least bufferd of from their goal but this time horizion will change the world forever. Count on it.
Basicy what I'm trying to say is: Their abstergo, strait out of assassins creed. Their going to save humanity from itself and make it happy about it too.
(and no I havn't been playing the second one, I'm waiting for the PC realise)

No one said they had, however in the scheme of things there is a lot of room to be a "good corp" especially when compared to outfits like the Azzies. Their not sweetness and light, their a megacorp but they've figured out that being a "good megacorp" is a viable strategy.



So wait, in lack of evidence to the contrary your whole argument against a plausibly of a company for whom a positive public image is part of their bottom line and spin is we should trust you implicitly. I'm not saying your certainly wrong but you must be aware of the irony right?

For my part I sincerely hope that there is not another Bug Invasion, Mega-AI, or AOEDBS* behind horizon. I can deal with megacorp power plays and PR spin much easier in the framework of shadowrun even if I understand. "Good" by megacorporate standards doesn't equate with "Good" by human standards.

But i've loved Horizon every since i read the story aobut them in Seattle 2072 and I'm intrigued by their part of the LA writeup in corporate enclaves.


*Any other Earth Dawn Bull Shit

The kind of raw power to do what horizon has done can't be obtained without snapping a few necks and performing a few perverted rituals in your back rooms with the bodies.*
What I'm saying is, to gain power, control and money you don't need to be the good guys, that’s been shown all over shadowrun. The only reason you make yourself out to be the good guys, when you've buried enough bodies in your backyard to get to your current position is if you want control over the hearts and souls of the people who gaze upon you. Theirs better ways to earn money than to have the hearts and souls of people (most of wich are excluded by being the goodguys), but if your goal is to be something more than a megacorp, if you want to change the world, than theirs no better way than to build up a reputation of being the paladian in shineing armour.
Of course I might be wrong, but do you realy think horizion couldn't do what their currently doing if they were as corrupt as the other AAAs?
*I don't mean this in a literal sense, their horizon, not the Azzys. What I'm saying their is that to pop out of this air like that you need some serius power and that typicall comes from a dark place.

You can't really hold it against someone when they do what is in their own best interest... Kill them for it? Absolutely. But, holding it against them is illogical.

Theirs also a third possible option, what if Horizion is something powerfull, but its actualy someone trying to help humanity? And not in the dark "I'm going to enslave you for your own good" type. A would be massiah, trying to reach out by giveing horizion the power it need in return for its help as a front for its goals?
You think so?

Ya me neither.

Cursed double-post.