[Killerclown]

I recently thought up a corporation for a Shadowrun game and I want to hear your guy's opinions on it. The basic idea is a Swedish corporation called Arkadia Entertainment. This company focuses on stuff like Video Games, Fun Houses, Resorts and most recently, Music. Arkadia had it's start as a gaming company called Numbskull Studios during the earlier years of The Awakening. Their founder, Sten Lindroth was a former executive of BMW and a avid gamer. He founded the company along with his life-long friend, Kevin Lund, who was a video-game programmer. The company released a steady stream of indie video games that did moderately well and were well received. In 2021, much to Sten's horror, Kevin Lund ended up goblinizing into a Troll right in front of him. Sten, in a act of hatred, ended up caving in his friend's head with a baseball bat.

After Sten was incarcerated, the company was taken over by Roland Lundmark, one of the company's head programmers. Under Lundmark's guidance, the company released it's first mainstream game, Crusader's Bane, a game where you play as a crusader during the First Crusade. The game was well received and the profits the company made out of it allowed them to move to a permanent office in Stockholm, Sweden. The Crash of 2029 almost wiped the company off the face of the map with the virus taking away all of it's data, including prototypes for new products. In a desperate bid to regain some of his profit, Roland put his company up for sale. After a few months of bidding, the company was bought by Melvin Ashwell, a English immigrant and owner of Ashwell Entertainment Concerns, a company that made a chain of Fun Houses called " Ashville Manor". Ashville Manor was a haunted house where guests had to solve complex riddles while avoiding traps and getting the bejesus scared out of them by actors. Ashwell helped his newly bought company adapt to the Matrix and AR gaming and made a pretty good profit off of it.

In 2043, Melvin bought an other company. This company, Forrester Amusements, owned a chain of theme parks called Adventure Bay, pirate themed attractions usually situated in costal cities. The Adventure Bay parks were completely run down by the time Melvin bought out Forrester. So Melvin had to spend over 8 million dollars from his company funds in order to do necessary renovations. Unfortunately, the parks had a hard time making back all the profit spend on them. Ashwell and his associates realized if they were to make a profit out of this new venture they would have to do something drastic. So, in 2046, they closed all the Adventure Bay parks and tore down most of them except for the one in the Kingdom of Hawai'i. Melvin then spent millions of dollars in time and resources to completely re do the Hawaiian Park and turn it in something much more profitable, a resort-spa called Kahuna Bay. This proved to be a profitable move and caused Melvin to form a other company called Ashwell Vacations to manage this new resort and other that would be eventually build.

In 2050, Melvin Ashwell had a stroke which killed him instantly after his head hit his desk. He was succeeded by Jurgen Lund, the brother of the deceased Kevin Lund. Jurgen, like his brother, Kevin, was a avid AR programmer and worked on developing hit new titles for Numbskull Studios, which had offices in 5 countries by 2052. In 2055, Jurgen Lund rebranded Ashwell Entertainment Concerns into Arkadia Entertainment and started to focus on building more Ashville Manors across the world. in 2059, The Corporate Court gave Arkadia AA status. in 2064, the company would experience a huge decline with Crash 2.0, which nearly destroyed Numbskull Studios like back in 2029. To save it's video game subsidiary, Arkadia was forced to take a large loan from Zurich Orbital Gemeinschaft Bank. It has recently bought out a music company called Long Records, which is located in NYC.

What do you think of these guys and how do you think they could be used in a campaign?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I think this thing would have died early; the first Crash would have killed it.  As I advised here ...

As a tip from a storyteller, limit the number of twists you put into a plotline, no matter the length.

... this applies to stories no matter the type.  The SR corporation that most resembles your story up above is JRJ International's ongoing 'parent' corporations, i.e. Fuchi, Novatech, and NeoNET - which, despite liking the corporation's concept and build &c., by the storyline really should be on the chopping block for a permanent downsizing, with JRJ getting removed from its owner as a penalty, or some such thing like that.  The company has had waaaay too many plot twists.

Arkadia Entertainment ... has had far, far too much time 'in the red', deaths of owners, etc.  It honestly would have been snapped up by someone a bit more serious about it in 2021 before being wiped out in 2029.  If it loses all of its product, all the stuff the people have been working on, then it's gone, kaput.  There is nothing for anyone TO buy, except now-worthless shares; its only assets are its programmers, and you would need Dunkelzahn-level charisma to prevent them from throwing up their hands and scattering to the four winds.

In 2043 they have another disastrous corporate decision, buying a chain of craptastic amusement parks which would cost millions billions (current prices for rides go from $1M to $100M between ride and scenery) to update / upgrade - which update fails, according to your timeline, and instead of sellling them off in order to recoup SOME of the loss, they tear them all down except for the one location.  Aaaand then the CEO dies.  And later, it's once more basically flatlined by Crash 2.0.

These guys barely get into the black before they're back in the red again.  So honestly, as an investor, as a corporate drone, as anything, given this corporation's track record, I wouldn't go near it even with a 3.048 meter pole.

My personal advice is to not get so consistently disastrous.  Yes, they need a difficulty to overcome, a twist to straighten out or to send them in a new direction, but this has a few too many.