What is the deal with the Umbrella Corporation?
So I haven’t seen anything new recently and am really too busy to compose one of my lists (as hard as it may be for you to believe, I actually do some research on my stuff), but last night while working on an inventory I came across this Resident Evil t shirt for the Umbrella Corporation and it reminded me of a question that has plagued me ever since I finished RE2: what exactly is the business plan and profit model for the Umbrella Corp?
Think about it for a minute. Umbrella is a huge biotech firm. That means they have investors and a board of directors, as well as auditors and so on. Basically, people who make sure the company makes a profit. However, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of plan to make any kind of money here. As far as I can see, here is Umbrella’s plan:
Step 1: Create super virus that will kill most of the population of the planet and turn them into zombies.
Step 2: Kill all your own employees (this might actually be a cost savings maneuver, as you would save a fortune in unemployment and retirement payments. Still, seems a little extreme)
Step 3: Release T Virus into the world and kill most of the population. Then turn them into zombies so they can eat the survivors.
Step 4: (secret)
Step 5: Profit.
So, I run my own company and while I am kind of a small amateur I have learned one very important lesson: zombies rarely buy things and give you money for your goods. In fact, zombies are probably the worst customer demographic available. They don’t have jobs and their only disposable income is whatever change is rattling around in the pockets of the rags they are wearing. On the other hand, they have other use for money so theoretically could spend 100% of it on t shirts, but really even newborn babies are better customers as their parents will spend money on food and so on. So how does killing off most of the planet turn into money? What is the mysterious step 4?
So at some point there has to be a stockholder meeting or something. Do the directors actually report what’s going on? “We managed to turn 87% of the human population into zombies, so profits for this quarter are trending down. However, our uncontrollable super soldier program is progressing nicely so if we can find a country with enough survivors to form an army we should see a nice profit from that.”
On the same note, what is up with creating super soldiers with the intellect and attitude of a raging bull on meth? Is there some kind of plan to train Nemesis to not go berserk and kill everything in sight first time he is released, or is this some other aspect of the mysterious “death and destruction make profit” program? Maybe some kind of apocalyptic death cult is paying them to destroy the world. But then, even if they are paying you a ton of money, where are you going to go to spend it? Do you really want to spend a week on vacation at Zombie Disney World? Going to buy a palatial estate surrounded by the undead?
Anyway, these are the questions that keep me up at night. By the way, I would like to mention that I started off playing RE2 first and was kind of freaked out by it. Then I went back and played RE1. In spite of worse graphics that game scared the bejesus out of me. Story or sound effects, I guess. Ever notice that modern games, in spite of more amazing graphics and details, then to be just plain shorter in content? You could spend a week wandering around Raccoon City in RE2, but these days you only get a few hours at best. I guess all those incredibly detailed graphics take up a lot of memory. Either that or video game companies are trending towards the lazy.
By the way, those of you who are purist and want to yell at me for talking about a video game when for the last few months I have been purely on movies, let me remind you that Resident Evil is also a series of movies staring Milla Jovovich. Also, while I personally focused on movies and love them, this blog started off with nerd dating advice and is really about whatever catches my nerd interest. One of these days I am going to start a detailed discussion of army building and table tactics for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (something I know a lot about). No way will that cost me readers.
Anyway, thanks for reading. If you have any insight as to what Umbrella does for money be sure to post a comment here. Follow and message me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks again. I should see something tonight and write up a good review tomorrow. Talk to you soon.
Dave
