What would Heaven be like exactly? Hell? Can I take my smart phone with me?

 

Not much is known about heaven. In the bible there are few references of how heaven would be like. Would I be able to play Clash of clans in heaven? Watch the big bang theory? Watch the new season of the Walking dead? Have sex with my partner? Play the latest Games? Watch Sports? What we do know from the bible is the well-known pearly gates and the streets of gold:

“And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” (Revelation 21)

Basically allot of precious expensive stones and gold decorating the place, but in a world where wealth is of no issue much of these precious stones are pretty useless other than being pretty eye candy to look at for an eternity. Also it said that people will keep their current bodies, there will be no hunger or need to sleep and no pain and suffering. What exactly do you do all day?

For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them (Revelation 7:15)

It is difficult to grasp just how long an eternity is. It’s forever and ever. It doesn’t end. Look at our lives now, we have computers and games, we have phones and apps, we take photos and share them with others – Heavens seems void of all modern technologies and is filled with stuff that seemed very desirable in the old age where gold and stones were wealth sought after. Could you image living eternity without your phone, electricity and spending all that time praising God?

Sleep is a very nice thing and an enjoyable experience especially when you are tired. Sex is also an amazing thing, but there will be none of that in Heaven. There will be eating and great feasts, not sure where the food will come from in terms of slaughter and grow houses, but I think it will just manifest ( God is Almighty After all)at least we will have that.

Personally for me this would be Hell – walking through golden streets and praising God for most of my time. I think the only reason why heaven is the place people want to be is because burning in Hell for an eternity is the only alternate. So yes Humans were given free will, but if someone holds a gun to your head and tells you that you have 2 choices: 1. Give me everything OR 2. I shoot you – Then you don’t really have a choice…

SimCity 2013 – a Broken Game

 

Many years ago I played this awesome game called SimCity 200. It is a game where get a massive square plot and you, the Mayor, build and manage a massive city. You need to supply your city with power, water and other necessities in order to have a functioning city full of satisfied people. It was a fun game. I recently started playing the new SimCity – SimCity 2013 also called SimCity 5 and here are my conclusions of this game.

At first when I heard the news that there was going to be a new SimCity released I was excited. As far as City building games go Maxis always did a good job. I did not get the game when it was first released – mostly due to the DRM – must be always online to be able to play the game which is a new disappointing feature in the SimCity franchise. Also – there were massive problems with their servers when the game launched.

So, after several months and game patches later I decided to play the game. At first it was a good game, but then the more I played the more I noticed that the game is actually broken. Traffic makes the game unplayable – once your city grows big cars get stuck in traffic and the city falls apart, because the fire trucks can’t get to the burning buildings and the ambulances can’t get to injured Sims. People have been complaining about the traffic and the creators have released patches that did improve the traffic flow, but it is still not right. MAXIS released a blog called “State of SimCity” and had this to say about traffic:

“ Traffic was always meant to be a challenge; in fact, many of our team considered traffic to be a strategy game all on its own. But, in reality, traffic was behaving irrationally. We got the player feedback and fixed it.”

Traffic is not fixed. Another problem is trying to find a balance between available jobs and workers. I have tried to find a balance and have not succeeded. I have low wealth Sims leaving my city, because they can’t find work, at the same time I have low wealth work places complaining they need workers. It doesn’t make sense!

Great works also do not work that great. There are syncing issues with different city plots to the Great works were some city plots can’t see the great work. I have built the International Airport and it would say my city benefits with 600 high wealth tourist, but then I cannot find any high wealth tourists in my city even though it is primed for them. Many others have complained about this glitch.

The main issue with SimCity 2013 is the small plot size you get to build your city – it is far too small and should at least be double the size. It is a constant struggle to find space to plop your buildings and almost always you have to sacrifice/bulldoze parts of you City in order to place necessary buildings. The fact is that the map sizes must be larger to make SimCity 2013 an enjoyable experience. MAXIS had this to say :

“City sizes have been a constant point of conversation among our players since we released the game. The game’s original design focused on the density of an intimate urban environment. It was about intercity connectivity and the challenge of managing a region of cities instead of one metropolis in isolation.”

Unfortunately traffic makes it impossible for cities to interconnect. You end up having a massive traffic jam on the highway before the cars even reach your city, because there is only one road coming into your city. They designed the game to be interconnected, but the game mechanics keeps it from working properly. The sad disappointed here is that MAXIS revealed the fact that:

“ I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes…”

No Bigger city sizes for SimCity 2013 ever. Very sad indeed. They are releasing DLC “Cities of tomorrow” where you build futuristic Cities and has a new feature where you can expand upwards into the sky, but not outwards like we all want. To me that seems very sneaky of them, knowing full well we want more space to build and then release this DLC that we have to pay for.

I am sure there are many angry SimCity fans out there right now. I enjoyed SimCity 200, but the SimCity 2013 is ultimately a disappointment. The Game has so much potential to be excellent, but the game plays like an unfinished beta version. They released the game too soon with far too many glitches. Why? I do not know. Some say EA is to blame for pushing MAXIS to release the game early to make money, for profit. Whatever the reason – they gave us a broken, unfinished game that needed more time to get the glitches sorted. That is my conclusion of the game SimCity 2013.

The Integrity of Gaming - Best Game Review

I was born in the computer age – before windows was here to make things simpler. Our first computer was running DOS. I was very young when I first played computer games and these games were running on DOS so it was very simplistic fun games of which the games I cannot remember. I played more “television games” with a console box and the time spent there was not allot. See, I was still in an age where we actually “went outside to go and play”. Our play time was almost always outside – whereas now kids spend most of their time inside with TV and Computer games. 

Unfortunately nowadays it is simply not safe anymore for a bunch of kids to play on the streets – and with technology and smartphones physical social interaction is becoming a thing of the past.

Back to my topic – the Integrity of Gaming. I was not a heavy gamer in terms of computers and consoles. In school I basically played 2 games all the time which was Heroes of Might and Magic 4 and Red Alert 2. The only reason why I only played these games was because it was the only games on my computer and I liked playing them. I did not have the need to find other games to play – that did not even occur to me and the fact that there might even be a Heroes of Might and Magic 5 did not occur to me at all. I was not a heavy or even a casual gamer. What I liked about these games was that I create a Massive map and it would take weeks to finish. I was introduced to the gaming scene only after I finished school and a new world of fun and games awaited me. 

Now seriously, Back to my topic: The Integrity of gaming.  The Best game I have ever played in my life is…The one and only…totally amazing… The Mass Effect Series. Bioware really did a great job with this game. It is a total of 3 games. Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Mass effect 3.  All of them are great games and if you do want to try it out you have to start with Mass effect 1. This game is Good for many reasons and one of them are that your choices has an effect throughout the series. The choices you make in number 1 will affect the game in number 3. And seemingly small choices and decisions you make can have great consequences throughout your adventure. 

 Another reason the game is the best is the amount of work that went into it. You can really see it – the dialogue and voice actors is excellent. The Storyline and the way the game progress and tells the story is done very well. I played the Mass Effect series  a few times over, because it is that good and there aren’t many other games that are this good.  Another good game they made was Dragon age, not as good as Mass Effect, but good. They unfortunately messed up with Dragon 2 which is not as good as Dragon age 1.

I played other games that were good as well like The Witcher 2, Command and Conquer 3, Anno 1404, Anno 2070, Skyrim, Warcraft 3, Rage, The settlers, Dawn of War(not number2), Assassins creed 1,2 and 3, Portal 1 and 2. Just to name a few. They are all great games to play, But the way Mass effect plays and how it was made is excellent. They did the best they could and then did even better.  

The game has integrity – some games that come out now are not very well done. You play it and tell yourself that they could have done such a better job with it. You have those game developers that make one good game – and then the second game of that series is crap. Almost like they are cashing in on the name of the first game.  Not Cool. Some strive to do even better and get it right.

I have read that Bioware is busy developing a new Mass Effect series and I will patiently await its arrival. 

For those who would like to know – The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age 3 are also in development and is estimated to be out early 2014. I will be playing those game So that is it – A very well done game deserves to be written about.

s if my computer can handle it.

Day 95 -Escapism and Game Addiction

 

Years ago I was heavily addicted to this one game. It completely took over my life. I liked it so much that i would go to bed late and wake up about 2 hours before I go to work just to pay the game. I was in a relationship that time and i spent so much time playing that game that i basically ignored the relationship which pretty much ended because of it.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to become addicted to a game

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to in this addiction completely ignore the real world around me just so that i can have more time to feed my addiction

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to become selfish in my need to 'get a fix' by doing what I can to make more time to play the game to satisfy myself and compromise others

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to give into this addiction and control my life where all i can think of is playing the game.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to become addicted to feeling powerful as my game character levels up and keep playing the game to feel more powerful

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become addicted to the feeling of accomplishment when I reach my goal in the game - not realizing that I feel as if I accomplish nothing in life and the game makes me feel better so I play it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the game as an escape from reality and as an distraction, because games are fun and easy - not realizing that I am running away from reality and not wanting to face life

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to believe that it is the game that makes me feel powerful, not realizing that i am the one creating the feeling  within myself.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to believe that addiction is something that happened to me - its caused by the game as if the game has power over me - not realizing that i created that addiction and I allowed myself to become addicted.

I commit myself to stop addiction by realizing that I created the addiction and that i have the power to stop it by choosing to stop it

I commit myself to realize that I ignored the world around me and escaped from it by playing games, because games are easier and fun whereas life is difficult - and that i cannot ignore the world around me. Instead I commit myself to make the world a better place

I commit myself to stop believing the power and accomplishment i feel when playing games to be real - and to realize that real power comes from changing within to become an effective being that is the directive principle in my life

I commit myself to stop all addictions as being addicted is me giving my power away and becoming depended on something outside myself

I commit myself to not become the picture below...