Science Says Red Beats Blue

[Andy Chalk]

Science Says Red Beats Blue

The war is over and a winner has been declared: Scientific research now proves that the Red Team is better than the Blue Team.

An article published in the Carol Davila University [http://www.liebertpub.com/cpb] in Bucharest, Romania, said the Red Team's advantage could be because the color red can act as a "psychological distractor" for men, possibly because they flush and turn red when they become angry.

Despite the obvious and now irrefutable unfairness of the situation, Epic Games [http://www.epicgames.com/]Vice President Mark Rein expressed little sympathy for the unfortunate losers on the Blue Team. "While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years," said Rein, who has long been rumored to drop out of games whenever he's automatically assigned to the Blue Team. "We don't anticipate any immediate changes to team colors."

The results are expected to help further scientific analysis in other ongoing studies, including Triad: A History Of Red Squadron Vs. Blue Squadron, Making It Up As We Go: A Contextual Analysis of Lightsaber Colors, and If Red Is So Awesome Then What's Up With All These Dead Star Trek Guys?


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[Eldritch Warlord]

This sounds like something that the Onion New Network would put up.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Science! I do hope that these guys will be nominated for the IgNobel Prize in Statistics.

-- Steve

[small]Red Sucks! Blue Rules![/small]

 

[man-man]

My game of choice is TF2, and I've always thought the majority of the characters look better in red than blue... it would seem I've also had some kind of advantage from this

 

[Thais]

Is this where my tax dollars are going?

 

[fix-the-spade]

This makes the assumption that nothing is different besides the team colour. What if the people who picked the red team are just better, or auto assigne, or team stacked, or if the maps used were asymetric, or maybe I should be thinking about this less.

 

[SeaCalMaster]

This makes the assumption that nothing is different besides the team colour. What if the people who picked the red team are just better, or auto assigne, or team stacked, or if the maps used were asymetric, or maybe I should be thinking about this less.

Not really; the study doesn't really say anything about why red tends to win more. The only claim it actually makes is that red tends to beat blue, while suggesting possible explanations. They are not claiming that they have found the reason for this discrepancy.

 

[Nugoo]

While I hesitate to think too hard about this study, it may be because red is generally thought of as a more aggressive colour, so the people who like red may be, in general, more aggressive than people who like blue. The increase in average aggressiveness is probably an advantage when playing Unreal.

 

[Iron Mal]

Seriously...this just screams out to me 'I lost and I can't bare to blame myself!'. Let's face it, this would be used all the time as a cop-out for the loseing team 'oh yeah? well, we're blue, so we were gonna lose anyway!'. Suggesting a particular colored team has an advantage is like stating that those lucky blue boxers you have on will give you an edge against the entire world.

 

[SeaCalMaster]

Seriously...this just screams out to me 'I lost and I can't bare to blame myself!'. Let's face it, this would be used all the time as a cop-out for the loseing team 'oh yeah? well, we're blue, so we were gonna lose anyway!'. Suggesting a particular colored team has an advantage is like stating that those lucky blue boxers you have on will give you an edge against the entire world.

It is statistically accurate, though.

 

[Nugoo]

Seriously...this just screams out to me 'I lost and I can't bare to blame myself!'. Let's face it, this would be used all the time as a cop-out for the loseing team 'oh yeah? well, we're blue, so we were gonna lose anyway!'. Suggesting a particular colored team has an advantage is like stating that those lucky blue boxers you have on will give you an edge against the entire world.

I don't think the people conducting the study were people who chose blue on Unreal Tournament.

 

[Portoparty]

they should probably expand this study to more games, if it make players more agressive, then in more tactical games, it could be that red teams lose more often than they win. ofcourse I havent found a single tactical shooter where red and blue are used to designate teams.

 

[the monopoly guy]

weird, I always try to play as blue on tf2...

these people msut have alot of time on their hands to be studying this instead of...oh say alternative fuels or global warming or a cure for stupid

 

[Mstrswrd]

...What about games where you can be other colors (like Green, or Brown, or anything, really)?

 

[vede]

Wow, I would have figured on Blue winning more often, because usually games designate the color red as the color of opposition, so people are more accustomed to clicking at red things. Crosshairs turn RED on enemies, you know. So having the entire enemy red all the time seems like an added bonus.

 

[BoilingLeadBath]

Heh, there was a similar study done in regards to actual sports teams with a similar result: Red wins more often.

This doesn't scream "there is a reason I lost!", this screams "Hey, lets see if that effect is valid in video games too!"

On the other hand, it's possible that there are other effects at play. Perhaps the blue characters are easier to see, or perhaps (like Halo1:Blood Gulch) the map is unfairly stacked in favor of red team.
(Seriously. Red is closer to the power weapons, has an awesome sniper's nest, doesn't have a protective cave overhanging their base, can camp blue-teleport-location easily... it is almost sad when red team loses.)

**************
[edit]

As for "waste of time - why not global warming?"

...eh, because the people conducting this are phycology/sociology people, not climate change people. They spent their college days learning about people, not environmental physics.

 

[Knight Templar]

.....But I like blue.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I guess that explains why you suck so bad at CTF.