AdamPFarnsworth5

Joined 01/23/2012

AOL Keyword: AWESOME

150 Posts

I used to play a lot of fantasy sports. You'd generally pick a team of players (football, basketball, baseball, etc) from all the guys playing that day, and then as they compile stats (points/rebounds/steals/etc in basketball, passing yards/catches/touchdowns in football, just to name a few), you get a cumulative point total for your team.

But now there aren't any sports being played...
at least no sports being played by humans.

In the video above you'll see 2 virtual NBA games being simulated by a Playstation. No one is playing the characters, it's just a simulation. (My wife thinks this is the dumbest thing ever lol) On the various fantasy sports apps, before the games, you can choose lineups, just as if they were real games, and then watch along and root for "your" players. The website https://www.awesemo.com/ has been running both NBA and NFL simulations, and I've found it really fun to watch along with. And really, I don't see much of a difference in passively watching real players play games, or simulated players play games (my wife strongly disagrees and thinks this is the dumbest thing ever lol)

I'm not really into NASCAR, but today I stumbled upon eNASCAR/iRacing, and I might become a full-time fan. Actual NASCAR drivers race virtually against each other, using realistic multi-monitor simulators on their computers. The graphics of the simulation look really, really good.
Here's an example of what a race looks like (this was on FOX, and had real racing commentators) https://youtu.be/g75HghckIyY?t=474
And here's an example of what their racing setups look like: https://youtu.be/nHDH0pL_qBM

There are a ton more Esports/Virtual Sports out there. I've seen Virtual Golf (sometimes there are simulated players like Happy Gilmore and Shooter McGavin lol), Virtual Baseball in addition to various Virtual basketball and football simulations. And fantasy apps are venturing into Reality TV as well. You can create a "team" of players for the show Survivor, and you get points for things like Wins Immunity/Cries on camera/Catches Seafood.

And of course League of Legends has had fantasy sports for years now. Here's a post Jon wrote back in 2014 https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2043/league-of-legends-gets-the-fantasy-football-treatment

Almost all the Virtual/ESports contests are free to enter, and many allow multiple entries, so you can try different lineups and see how they score. It's a fun thing to fill the time with, and occasionally you can win 5-10 cents lol. My favorite app is FanDuel, which you can download from any app store, or go to this website https://www.fanduel.com/


I geek out over superhero movies, and this camera test just dropped for The Batman.

I didn't think we needed another Batman movie... but we probably always will lol.

This is very simple, but looks so rad!


Since speedrunning is often topic on Cheerful Ghost, and we run Speedrunning competitions at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, I figure this is a fitting video :)

It covers the history of speedrunning, from the super old school "demo" days of Doom to the current Games Done Quick.


The first trailer to Black Widow is out!

I'm still a little worried that this will suffer a similar fate as Rogue One and Solo for (prequels where we know the ultimate outcome, thus making the stakes for the main character not as high, because ultimately they live), but I am more excited for this than I thought I would be.

Maybe because I'm in the middle of a Winter Soldier rewatch (as I'm rewatching it, I honestly wonder if I ever actually saw it? It feels like the first time I'm seeing scenes in it lol), but I'm just lately getting into Nat's character. Endgame was sad for her, but wasn't *that* sad to me, but I bet next time I watch Endgame, it'll hit even harder after watching Black Widow.

Enjoy the trailer! It has Hopper in it!


For something completely different, here's a high school dance team, performing the story of Infinity War and Endgame :)

*spoilers for Infinity War and Endgame* lol


A new fan-made scene by FXitinPost of the fight between Vader and Obi-Wan at the end of Star Wars Episode IV.

It's very cool, and I love the emotion of it. Check it out and post your thoughts below!


The Force will be with you, always

I don't have much to say about this, other than it's a fantastic fan-made trailer for all the Star Wars movies!


The most important information from this trailer is seeing that the movie release date has been moved from May to April!

**The comments are going to be full of speculation (at least by me lol). I don't know what will be spoilers or not***

I'm a little underwhelmed by the title, but that's only because of all the endless speculation on what it might be.

Watch the trailer and let's discuss theories in the comments!



Blockchains in games sounds like an amazing idea. I kind of love the idea of Cryptokitties, but it does sound like a waste of money. In this video, blockchains are discussed as an actual game mechanic that could be amazing in some type of MMO game. It would obviously take a lot of work for the developer to put out enough content in the game for everyone, but it could work sort of the opposite of the Mordor games. Instead of the enemies growing based on killing you, your individual weapon would grow specific to what you do in the game. Check the youtube video out, it talks about it in more detail :)

(And you can skip ahead about 45 seconds to get to the actual video if you want)