Salty Bet

Salty Bet is a gaming site on which computer-controlled fighters face off while chat-room spectators bet fake money on epic and ridiculous battles such as a yellow bus versus Winnie the Pooh. A developer could see Salty Bet as an artificial-intelligence-driven fighting game utilizing twitch gameplay, community-created fighters from the MUGEN 2-D game engine, and a simple betting system with odds based on the amount of Salty Bucks wagered on each fighter. A copyright lawyer could build a career on the fighters, stages and music ripped and distorted from comics, television, video games and pop culture. A linguist may find the chat-room lingo—such as “dreams,” “mexihealth,” and “mistakes were made”—profoundly fascinating. Statisticians would drown in win-loss records and stats available to those who shell out $3.99/month to upgrade their free membership. A group of friends could turn the semiregular Thursday-night tournaments into a party—pizza, beer, and everyone betting through their smartphones while cheering and jeering the almost impossible-to-predict outcomes. For good or bad, Salty Bet is a pure product of the Internet culture. However, it hardly matters when the green-hued Ronald McDonald on whom you bet thousands of Salty Bucks mounts the ultimate comeback with a continuous assault of french fries and defeats a computer cursor, leaving you rich and salty.