First, a quote from the Wikipedia article about the Alien franchise: ”Throughout the series, an ensemble of characters are repeatedly manipulated by and put in harm's way by the greedy, unscrupulous, megacorporation Weyland-Yutani Corp which seeks to capture the Aliens for bio-weaponization purposes.”
And then, read the Wikipedia article about megacorporations, a term popularized by William Gibson who wrote Neuromancer, the most famous cyberpunk novel:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation
The Alien franchise is a part of, or at least closely related to, the cyberpunk genre. As you probably know, Ridley Scott directed Bladerunner just a couple of years after he directed the original Alien movie. Those two movies are not the same, but they are both about megacorporations. Just the term and trope is profoundly political. It’s about economical power relations, which is the core of the Marxist understanding of the world. Gibson has also mentioned his own creative connection to the Reaganomics of the early 1980s. That is what made him write Neuromancer and it’s sequels. Scott and Gibson are usually mentioned as the two most prolific creators of the cyberpunk genre, although many others have contributed to the genre too. Philip K. Dick is one of them.
Alien isn’t just a simple minded story about spaceships and xenomorphs. It’s a political franchise, even if you don’t get any explicit political messages or subversive instructions. If you don’t get that capitalism and it’s worst aspects, in a more or less satirical way, is a part of Alien, I rest my case.
The reason why I initiated this discussion in the first place, is conceptual. By understanding the genre conventions, it’s easier to create new stuff. The framework gives you something to think and work with. The cyberpunk genre and it’s tropes and themes can be seen as creative tools, something to use, bend, and twist. If you don’t see or know the genre specific tools, you can’t use them.
That’s also why I think that the Alien RPG should conceptualize corporate power more. I’m not aiming for some kind of Marxist or leftist propaganda, I’m rather trying to be true to the films, the cyberpunk in space genre and it’s core themes. I would say that both Peter Weyland and Eldon Tyrell are corporate ”puppet masters”, caricatures of corporate tycoons or dystopian robber barons. By understanding what they are doing, you at least get glimpses of the bigger picture. That bigger picture is about corporate power (and it’s encounter with alien life). The space truckers are in trouble for a reason: they are in the lower end of the corporate food chain.