What corp, or division of a megacorp, would you use to be the Shadowrun equivalent of something like modern day Rupert Murdoch's News Corp?

Horizon? At least for the general "massively influential media group" vibe.

News Corp is tiny little company by SR standards. It's only rated the 284th largest company in the world. Comcast, which owns NBC, is 228th. National Amusements, which owns CBS and Viacom, is probably larger, though as a private company it doesn't provide numbers.

That may work, but any suggestions for the: Creepy invasive media corp, instead of the "nice guy corp" vibe of Horizon?

Ignoring the fundamental silliness of the idea that a media company can ever become one of the 12 or so largest companies in the world, you don't get to be one of the 12 or so largest companies in the world of SR being a "nice guy corp". You get ripped into little pieces and fed to the dogs if you try that.

Obviously the image of Horizon is just that, a carefully crafted image.

I'm aware of that, hence the quotes. I agree that there is a dark underside to it, but its the perception of many that they are the nice guys and good to run for.

Let them. And perhaps the survivors might possibly discover that things are not quite as they believed.

All that aside, it doesn't help with what I'm looking for now.

re: Horizon: Well, take a look at Apple and Google. People adore the fuck out of these enormous, incorporeal and, save for Jobs, pretty much faceless entities. Now imagine they had a baby. Apple is already branching out into other media.
Now dial up to eleven and let simmer for a while.
OTOH, I don't follow the new fluff and metaplot all that attentively, but the vibe I get from Horizon, the "Media corp" that holds sway over "the public opinion" strikes me as somewhat antithetical in a setting where 8/9/10 gigantic corporations act as international nations unto themselves and pretty much divide and rule the world between them. Each of these entities should have two or three News Corps of their own in their portfolio, and if you are in their zone of influence, their version of the truth is your version of the truth.

To the OP: Take any AAA (out of habit and tradition, I'd go with Aztech or MCT), put a "News" or "Media" or whatever moniker behind that, and wham, instant invasive media empire.
If you want to be subtle, make it a only subsidiary.

Seriously? Media is everything. All Google does it sell ads, after all. Everyone's diversified (GM doesn't just make cars), but it could still be the 'primary' aspect of the brand.

I'd agree with you in 2012. Google isn't a Shadowrun megacorporation.

Shadowrun megacorporations are huge. Apple and GM are just a assets of Ares, along with the NASA and many companies that would be in today's top 50. Many writers tend to forget this, thinking of Ares as a gun company, as Renraku as a computer company, as SK as an industrial company.

Sure, each AAA has its strong points, something that made the difference that allowed them to get the AAA status, but it's just a part of the megacorporation.

That's why having a AAA megacorporation that only made of media companies is a bit difficult to accept.

I'm just saying it doesn't seem 'fundamentally silly' that a media company could "ever" become a mega, not that there are 'media-only megacorps'. There aren't *any* X-only megacorps. Exactly, Ares is 'known' as a gun company, but it has everything. That doesn't mean that the idea of a megacorp known for media is silly.

Google has a huge market cap, but it's the 325th largest company in the world.

What else does Horizon do in SR?

I've never seen anyone driving a Horizon car, using a Horizon comlink, shopping at the Horizon hypermart, using a Horizon backhoe, fly to NYC on Horizon Airlines, on a Horizon jet, etc.

I've never seen any of that for anyone, cuz I'm not in SR. But I just assumed in my ignorance that Horizon, being a mega, did lots of things. I certainly don't find the idea of a known-for-media company ever becoming a mega silly.

Aztechnology is the company you are looking for. They have a huge PR/marketing/media arm, as befits the world's largest supplier of consumer goods. Also very much a "not a good guy" vibe.

- Horizon owns dozens (if not hundreds) of trid channels.

- Horizon has FULLY BOUGHT OUT Truman Network and associates

- Horizon has Charisma Associates Firm, that is basically a huge record label and PR machine all rolled into one. So it touches a majority of the novahot celebs as well as has its fingers in a huge number of government pies

- Horizon has the Dawkins Group which does all sorts of special ops that prevent its competitors from getting a leg up.

Yes, you may not see people own a Horizon 'Link, but all the movies that they watch on it, the games the play on it, and the ballots they cast with it have been touches by Horizon in very fundamental ways.

On top of that, it is my understanding that all Megacorps do a little bit of everything to be where they are. But they mostly do it through subsidiaries. For instance Aztechnology, which has been around long enough to be fully fleshed out, is KNOWN for their super cheap food and their love of 'Ancient Aztlaner Ways' but this would clearly not be enough to propel them into top 12 status. They have a whole ball of other interests, from owning car companies to manipulating governments and wars. These are large offshoots that get relatively little press.

Here's the list of the top 500 global companies.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/glo...list/index.html

If you look at the top 30, they are mostly oil companies, car companies, bank/financial companies, along with HP, GE, AT&T. The first "Media" company seems to be Vivendi, at 225. I think if you merged together every media company on the list they wouldn't be as large as Volkswagen.

I'd go for an Aztech Subsidiary. As I recall, they were top dog PR wise till Horizon showed up.

The only scary one on that list that I see is Wal-Mart, and for good reason. If we needed a real-life Aztechnology, Wal-Mart's going to be it. By sheer buying power, they can and will own everything. But let's go to the heart of the matter that you're missing. Yes, those are big companies that control much of the world's assets. But with all of that money, what do they really have? They can control all of the oil in the world, but without the electronics, food supply, entertainment, ect., they're just a company.

What makes a Megacorp in the Shadowrun world, in my humble opinion, is self sustainability. Each corporation that has AAA status, or even AA status, can stand on their own two legs no matter what happens to the world around them. Why? Because they have become that world. They are the Earth, the Trees, and the Sky of anyone and everyone that works for them or purchases from them. A disaster like the Archology would have ruined any of today's corporations. The bad PR, the lose of life, and the sheer amount of money put into a project like that would have crippled any other company. So why is it that Renraku is still in the game? Because that one archology might have been one of several that they have in the world? Maybe it was just a project that fell through for them and they scraped it. They saw it failed, washed their hands, and moved on. Normal companies do not have the raw resources and power necessary to do that in 2012. At least not to the amount that Megacorps can.

A Megacorp can, if it needed to, produce and sell all of their own products at all of their own locations and keep all of the money for themselves without ever having to outsource to another company to do so (though they would be stagnant for multiple reasons, which is why they allow 10 of their kind to exist at any given time). This makes them so insulated that they can stay alive even if the world crumbles because wars or politics. Ever wonder how the conflicts in SR don't seem to really phase the AAAs? It's because they don't care. If their sites in China start to wane, they'll fall onto their other locations all over the globe. You'd have to systematically start to ruin every front, company, and holding that a Megacorp has to even begin to dent them or make them worried. And from that, they'd just lash out at you with their completely overpowering amount of military and security and lawyers. You, as a person or even radical political group, stand no chance.

Welcome to a dystopian future. Soy line is over there, past the mind scanner.

Isn't AT&T essentially a "media" company? I've always assumed that telecommunications and advertising was lumped in with media. I would assume that Horizon probably has a huge matrix provider services division.

Honestly, I have a lot of trouble figuring out what AA and A corps do when you have the mega's controlling everything. And what companies are the banks and energy suppliers of Shadowrun, since as far as I know, no company is known for Oil, Electricity, and other utilities? Though, S-K is in finance and chemicals and Wuxing is the only one that seems to be heavily banking focused.

Shiawase and Mitsuhama run nuclear power plants. And you have AA companies in both areas like UniOil for energy and FBV and HKB for banking. IIRC SR3's Corporate Download states that the AAAs control about half of the world's economic power. But AAs are also megas (and exterritorial). What AAs don't have is a seat on the Corporate Court. And most AAs won't be as diversified as the big ten. I'd guess most of the Global 500 that made it to 2072 without merging into a AAA could be considered a AA by size.

AT&T primary business remains telecommunications. Their interest in media doesn't go further than moving Internet media content, video sharing services and the like. But they do not create content (if you except funding political ads during electoral year, that's it).

According to Corporate Enclaves and Corporate Guide, Horizon has assets in medias at large, advertising, PR communications, online services, software, personal electronics, Matrix infrastructures, satellites, space launch, and real estate.

First, AA-rated corporation also are megacorporations. AAA-rated corporation are prime megacorporations.

AAA control the world much like the US and Soviet Union controlled the world during the Cold War. They have a lot of influence, and anyone that really bother them is canned. But there nonetheless are a lot of smaller players around, which play their own role in keeping the balance. In Seattle, take Federated-Boeing for instance: it was big enough to fend off a takeover attempt by MCT in the early 40ies, but at the same time, its main supplier and reseller is Ares Macrotechnology. A corporation like Evo or Wuxing that doesn't have enough buildings in Seattle to justify running its own power plant would buy electricity from Gaeatronics instead of Shiawase Atomics. And Shiawase and Horizon probably prefered to deal with police forces from a smaller corp like Lone Star than with Ares-owned Knight Errant, rather than trying to compete for the contract. AAA prime megacorporations are huge and very diversified, but they all have locations and fields were they are weak.

SR often treated oil as a fading industry, with lots of electrical cars and the likes. Most of the oil companies, United Oil, Global Sandstorm..., are in the second- or third-tier. Aztechnology owns Pemex, Saeder-Krupp also has several oil subsidiaries and used to pull the strings in the Middle East (though maybe with Halliburton-type activities rather than just oil production), with a now growing competition from Evo. Saeder-Krupp and Shiawase also have large energy division (Ruhr Nuklear and Shiawase Atomics).

Banking has been also mostly left out at start, but the trend has been changing. Ares Macrotechnology owns Bank of America, Neonet owns Silveril Investments, Renraku owns Globank, Saeder-Krupp owns Commerbank, Schweizere Bankverein and Nippon Credit & Trust, Shiawase owns Shiwase House Bank, Wuxing owns Wuxing Financial Services, Albion Mutual Funds and now the Malaysian Independant Bank. There also are independent AA HKB, Frankfurter Bankverein and Pacific Rim Bank & Financial Services.
The fact that SR major economical actors are very diversified conglomerates would radically change the way the financial sector would work. Within a megacorporation, there would always be a number of subsidiaries with cash excess who can lend to subsidiaries with growth potential. Megacorporation also needs their own banking system to pay their employees, issue corporate scrip and handle intra-corporate business. This would actually be very similar to how Japanese zaibatsu worked prior to WW2.

Again, it's not 'a mega that does nothing at all but media'; all megas do everything. If that's what you meant when you called it silly, then yes: *any* such 'monoculture' mega would be silly.

The writers of SR1 were essentially creating global Keiretsu, though the AAAs were more Zaibatsu. Hence the big Japanese corp dominance bit. However they failed to understand that the core of the classic huge Zaibatsu or Keiretsu is a huge bank.

Well, all the megas have banks folded into them.

It's just thatS-K and Wuxing have BANKS folded into them.

The closest example in real life to what a Megacorp looks like is General Electric. They are the 16th largest company in the world and have their hands in every industry. It was mentioned that Comcast owns NBC, but that's only partially true. From the wikipedia page:



The point is that all the mega-corps will own a major portion of the media. If you want something like Newscorp, just pick a mega that wishes to express conservative philosophies. I'd probably choose Ares.

No, the Pre-WW2 Japan's economy was largely controlled by "The Big 4". Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo and Yasuda.

Lets look at one of these, Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi was a huge and diversified company. Though the company formally called Mitsubishi is the 125th largest company in the world it is shell of the original due the the USG forcing the breakup after the war. If you include all the members of the "Mitsubishi Group", which includes companies that are formally independent, it would be the 6th largest company in the world, with about 250 billion dollars in revenue and 350,000 employees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi


Newscorp is actually a very good example. Because if you look at the executives and employees political donations you'll see a rather different pattern than what people see on TV.

For example, here are the first 5 top donors from the various Fox units on opensecrets.org
LANG, MICHAEL B
MANHATTAN BEACH,CA 90266 FOX ENTERTAINMENT 2/29/2012 $20,000 DNC Services Corp
SMITH, STEVEN DELANO
ATLANTA,GA 30328 FOX SPORTS SOUTH 2/29/2012 $15,000 DNC Services Corp
GIANOPULOS, JAMES N
BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90210 FOX FILM ENTERTAINMENT/CHAIRMAN AND 6/23/2011 $5,000 Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte
WALTRIP, DARRELL MR
FRANKLIN,TN 37069 FOX SPORTS/ANALYST 9/30/2011 $5,000 Perry, Rick
CROWE, CAMERON B
SAN DIEGO,CA 92111 FOX 9/27/2011 $2,500 Obama, Barack

Megacorps are like icebergs.

The part you can see is only a tiny fraction.

The part you can't see is vast, unknown, and CAN KILL YOU.





-k