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Aug 5, 2013 - 05:49 PM |
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You are all fucking up if you're not watching Saltybet. |
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Just when I thought we had already reached the peak intersection of of videogames, the internet, and hilarity with VGCW I am proven wrong.
http://saltybet.com/
What the fuck is this?
The tl;dr version is that you are betting fake money on Mugen AI matches. Bear with me here.
The long version is that whoever runs the site has this fully automated now to run 24/7. At this point I believe they have over 1500 different characters. While that in itself is kind of funny and maybe worth watching for a bit, what changes everything is that the site has a full account system where you are actually betting (fake) money on matches.
It's completely free to sign up for the site; you'll start with $400 salty bucks, and can bet at much or nothing on any given match. You can never completely run out of money though; if you do lose all of your money (referred to as "going to the Salt Mines") you'll always have a very small amount based on your level ranging from $3-54, so you can always get back in the action. They do offer a premium account thing for a very small amount ($3 a month) which raises your minimum account balance at all times to I think $666 and offers a couple of other non-essential perks like seeing your whole bet history. This is all completely optional and not necessary though, more of just a helping the guy run server costs.
Where this works and becomes some addictive and fun is that even though it's completely fake and irrelevant money, it becomes a hook to actually watch and care about outcomes, especially since it becomes partially competitive. Every match has a 30 second window before starting where you can place your bets. This time is filled with people specifically trying to throw odds by saying things like "ALL IN ON DBZ NIGGA", "LEGIT MATCH", "I'M STAYING OUT OF THIS ONE!" etc. Once the window ends you can see everyone who bet and the odds. This leads to the chat saying all in on Bleach except no one actually does that except for people who don't know better, so when the betting ends the odds are like 256:1 against Bleach. Also once you've watched it for a while you can start to make reads which is already retarded because it's Mugen, but it only works like half of the time. You get to know enough information where you can make semi-safe assumptions like MS paint clone characters are always garbage, never bet on DBZ, etc. But then it's super easy for there to be upsets or surprises which leads to people flipping out and losing all of their money (going to the mines).
Also they have a pretty great playlist going; they'll occasionally play specific tracks for events (like the Final Countdown), but 99% of the time the playlist is a pretty damn good selection of game music, with occasional other things thrown in. Common tracks are FF, Chrono Cross/Trigger, PSO, Diablo 2, Perfect Dark/Goldeney, etc.
Also a big part of the appeal is the complete WTF or crazy factor stuff. Off the top of my head here's some of my easy favorite matches of the last few days.
Dio vs Uppercut: http://www.twitch.tv/saltybet/b/439497201?t=69h48m51s
-This is probably the best one. Uppercut is the best fucking character.
Yuri di AAAAAA & Yuri di AAAAAA versus Yuri di AAAAAA & Yuri di AAAAAA: http://www.twitch.tv/saltybet/b/439497201?t=47h46m05s
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Ronald McDonald vs Thanos: http://www.twitch.tv/saltybet/c/2691306
-Ronald is 1-frame parrying every attack there by the way.
Master Sakura vs Rare Akuma: http://www.twitch.tv/saltybet/b/439497201?t=46h47m20s
-Not the best overall match, but the super Akuma finishes the match with is maybe the best thing I have ever seen in my life.
In short everyone should be watching this, and there's practically no reason not to have it on in the background at all times. He just went to the 24/7 format a few days ago, it's fully automated so I don't think the person running it is even here most of the time, it's actually pretty impressive in that regard. They're adding new characters a lot now too; it was actually down for about 30 minutes today while he added like 200 new characters, and he has another 343 lined up apparently. It's all so fucking stupid, and even reading my post I think I sound like a lunatic, but every single person I've shown this to is totally hooked now, and the viewership is blowing up now. He was at 200 peak until a GAF and reddit thread went up on Friday and some notable people like Jeff Gerstmann starting posting it on twitter and getting hooked. That got it to 800-1000 on Friday and Saturday, and then yesterday it hit 1500. When I woke up for work this morning it was already at 950, and right now it's not even peak hours and there's like 1900 people.
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