Topic of the Week: Megacorporations

[Caelphon]

We can see anti-corporate sentiments across the Orion Spur. We see it in the Solarian Alliance, in the Coalition of Colonies and even the Republic of Biesel (considered the breeding ground for Megacorportions). There has also been OOC sentiments regarding a wish to move away from a setting that focuses on the megacorporations.

Do you think that anti-corporatism poses a significant threat to the megacorps? 

Do you think there should be an expansion regarding Einstein Engines presence within the Republic of Biesel? 

What do you think should happen with the megacorps? 

[Marlon P.]

What does the anti-corporatism want to replace corporations with?

[Boggle08]

5 hours ago, Caelphon said:

There has also been OOC sentiments regarding a wish to move away from a setting that focuses on the megacorporations.

Frankly, this will always be an OOC sentiment, as long as megacorporations exist in the setting. Pretty much everyone here, you and I included, hate corporations outside of the game. Everyone is at different levels of sentimentality on the matter. Because of that, I don't think the community as a whole can be objective about what megacorps need to be interesting, or what they want to see. Most discussions I see, people don't care and don't want to entertain possibilities beyond them remaining as generic villains.

5 hours ago, Caelphon said:

Do you think that anti-corporatism poses a significant threat to the megacorps? 

Looking over the material, the only time we ever see Megacorps capitulate their dominance over a planet/nation is if some macro-scale event hits them in tandem. Himeo squirmed out of Hephaestus control because of a massive interstellar depression that hurt their ability to project power. The SCC corporations were forced out of solarian space and politics only after the entire country imploded. If we're going with precedent, anti-corporatism is only a threat if the corporations themselves aren't doing to well as a whole.

5 hours ago, Caelphon said:

Do you think there should be an expansion regarding Einstein Engines presence within the Republic of Biesel? 

I would be more interested in Einstein's relationship with the rest of Sol and other nations, but the district(?) that Einstein managed to purchase out from Mendel city might be worth development. It could be interesting.

5 hours ago, Caelphon said:

What do you think should happen with the megacorps? 

The biggest criticism I see of corporations in our setting, at least from a writing perspective, is that they're boring. Having our corporations just being corporations means that the bottom line is always going to be making the line on the graph get higher. Growth and profit, that's it. The same, predictable motivation of every corporation that's ever existed. I think the best solution to this would be to reconfigure corporations to have a goals or missions outside of just biggering. We can already see vestiges of this in corporations like Idris, with their mafia family undertones, and Zheng-hu, with their weird post-human augmentation theming. Think blurring the line between Institute and Corporation.

[Kintsugi]

The fact of the matter is that megacorporations are boring. Narratively, they are always going to behave the same way: pursue profit. They have no ideology. They have no agenda beyond "act in a way that makes the pursuit of profit easier". One cannot be loyal to a corporation as they are loyal to a nation-state. There are no distinguishing traits that make megacorporate employees anything but megacorporate employees. At most, megacorporations have gimmicks and hats. Nobody OOCly (At least from the perspective of an entity that could exist in the real world) likes megacorporations because they are dangerously amoral *at best* and outright evil at worst. They are two-dimensional bad guys that we have given total control over our setting because a decade ago someone on another server thought it'd be cool if SS13 was a grimdark corporate dystopia. It is not a coincidence that the most interesting event arcs and lore developments on this server frequently only use the megacorporations as supporting characters in a story where the main cast are factions aligned predominantly with countries. It is not a coincidence that the most interesting megacorporation we have, Idris, feels the least like a megacorporation (in my opinion, Idris comes across as a blend between a banking dynasty and the mafia if it was a legitimized organization.) 

9 hours ago, Caelphon said:

Do you think that anti-corporatism poses a significant threat to the megacorps? 

What I know OOCly about the lore team's position on megacorps is that at least one loremaster feels that they are the ultimate power within the setting and are completely unstoppable, with total hegemony over the spur and de facto dominance over the countries within it. I suppose with that in mind, anti-corporatism must only be capable of limited successes, unfortunately.

9 hours ago, Caelphon said:

Do you think there should be an expansion regarding Einstein Engines presence within the Republic of Biesel? 

Not particularly. Besides the fact that I think the less megacorporate lore there is, the better, EE gaining a foothold in Biesel never made much sense to me at all and I think it was something of a narrative misstep done within the context of KotW. If anything, I'd like to see the SCC displace EE after its short period of success.

9 hours ago, Caelphon said:

What do you think should happen with the megacorps? 

OOCly? I would like them to be completely marginalized and rendered into what they ideally should be, as the aforementioned best arcs illustrate - regional powerhouses at most (like holding de facto control over Biesel), and supporting characters within other countries. They could have influence, certainly, but they are not infallible and ultimately cannot act against the governments they operate within without running the risk of major losses or outright localized destruction. Not the be-all end-all superpower with total control over the setting.

Edited April 6, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[Marlon P.]

I agree with everything Dansemacabre said. His point about the limits of anticorporatisms limitations answered my rhetorical question.