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I just finished the single-player game in BioShock 2, and, as expected, the story wasn’t as good as that of BioShock. “As expected,” because BioShock was one of the best stories I’d ever played, largely because of the visionary character of Andrew Ryan.

Andrew Ryan is the founder of Rapture, a fabulous undersea libertarian utopia. The city collapsed into various factions, all of which were driven mad by gene splicing technology that had given them super powers.

I find Ryan endlessly fascinating. Like John Galt in Atlas Shrugged he has created his perfect world.  But Ryan’s ideals were tested in a way that Galt’s never were, and — here’s the fascinating part — Ryan failed the test.  He became the government he hated, seizing the property of the rivals that threatened his regime.  And yet he never stopped believing in his ideals.

Games website IGN placed Ryan in their list of greatest videogame villains, but I don’t think Ryan is a villain.  He’s a hero who failed to live up to his own ideals. In that sense, he’s more real than John Galt or Howard Roark. To be able to say that about a videogame character is a great compliment to Ken Levine and the team at Irrational Games.

The Wall Street Journal This Morning radio show had a story today about a drug trial for an AIDS medication.  The pill in question, Truvada, is already in use as an antiretroviral for patients who are HIV-positive.  It’s now being tested as an AIDS prevention medication. The trial involves giving the drug (or a placebo) to gay and bisexual men, who are to take the one pill a day.

What really angered me about the story was that the woman reporting on the trial said, at least twice, “It’s hard taking a pill every day.”

No. It’s not hard to take one pill a day that will prevent you from getting a dread disease.

Of course, AIDS is a disease that can be avoided by not engaging in certain high-risk behaviors.  These people can’t seem to avoid doing that either.

• Netflix now offers, as its primary plan, unlimited streaming over the internet but no DVDs for $7.99. I say this is their primary plan, because it’s the one they list on their home page — and you can add unlimited DVDs starting at only $2 a month more.  More evidence that cable TV is on its way out. Meanwhile, Blockbuster Video declared bankruptcy in September.
• Homefront is a new game from THQ in which Korea invades and occupies the US mainland in 2026. North Korea fired shells into an island claimed by South Korea yesterday.  Reality imitates art.
• There’s snow all over around here — it fell yesterday.  Yesterday I talked with colleagues and clients in Toronto, New York, Baltimore, and central Pennsylvania.  These are all places I expect to have snow before Seattle. None of them had any — in fact, they all had temperatures in the 40s or 50s.  That’s just not right.