Healthy people! Today I have prepared a very interesting topic for you to think about, have you ever wondered why red and blue colors are used to indicate teams, individual players or territory in competitive games?? I asked myself this question, so let’s look at it.
In this blog we will talk about the important function of color in games, namely the differentiation of opposing sides. Today we will find out why red and blue are used in games, how they affect the player and whether there is any difference between them.
If you want to absorb all this information in a simple and relaxing way, you can follow the link to the video!
Red and blue, why exactly are they? Why did level designers choose these colors?? After all, there are, for example, black and white, like in chess, why not take them? But everything is quite simple and clear, let’s start small, of course.
Functions of color in games
Color in games performs several key functions in the visual component of a project. Most of these features have crossed over into the video game industry from fine art, design, and film. The main one is that color serves to recognize game elements. Here are some striking examples:
Mirror’s Edge where we see that the game, thanks to color, leads us along the desired path and shows where we can jump, what we can catch on, or where we can go.
Another great example is the game Super Hot, it’s even more clear here take everything that’s black, kill everyone who’s red.
Classic examples of the designation of game elements include, such as tinting a place where you can climb in yellow, or barrels that can explode and cause damage in red.
Thanks to color, the player can distinguish the desired object in the scene, for example, the same ledges that you can climb onto, or pay attention to the vital scale in the game interface, for example, your amount of mana or health.
Another important function of color is its ability to evoke emotions in the viewer. For example, a differently colored game scene can evoke completely opposite emotions in the player. These are the first emotions these footage from games evoke in you? Fury? Disgust? Or Calm?
Through color there is also a change of day and night, a change in air temperature and a change in the seasons of the year in the game, you can easily see the difference in the game Stardew Valley
Color also demonstrates various physical phenomena or even how the world is perceived by the hero of the game at the current moment in time, for example, we can notice that in some games, when you have little health, the screen begins to turn red.
Psychology of red and blue
The color red tells us about danger, excitement, passion, strength and aggression. It also causes not only an emotional but also a physiological reaction. The color red causes shock, it completely captures attention and requires effort to perceive. Focusing on the color red increases heart rate and blood pressure. Red color is more noticeable than others. Thanks to its powerful effects on your peripheral nervous system, red can also make you feel more alert and get you moving and taking action. Do you think why red and its similar shades are often found in the game DOOM?. Yes, so that, coupled with the dynamics of the game, your emotions coincide.
Blue and blue, in turn, reflect harmony, perseverance, seriousness and rigor. They are also calming for our nervous system; if you persistently look at blue or dark blue, this leads to a decrease in heart rate and breathing and for some time reduces blood pressure, which is the exact opposite of red. In many national cultures, blue is associated with ideas of protection, and red, on the contrary, is associated with war, which once again tells us about their opposition to each other.
The function of red and blue as a delimiter between opposing sides.
It all started back in the distant bearded years, when these colors were used in sports and in our lives in general, well, we won’t talk about that, the blog is still about games. We can trace the beginning of the use of these colors in video games with the advent of the first game with RGB, you might say Galaxian (1978), but I will answer you Color Gotcha (1973).
Well, the first game where we can see the red and blue teams as rivals was Wimbledon 1974, Well, further development of graphics is no longer in this video. And now let’s continue our thread of the story, why these colors are used in games.
Nowadays, color in games is one of the most important tools in game design. In turn, red and blue separately can be partially equated to identifier colors.
Color identifiers (or symbols) group and separate groups of game elements, such as players on different teams, game characters, and game areas.
Color symbols should be as prominent and contrasting with each other as possible so that they can be easily distinguished, and also have nothing in common with other identifiers and neutral colors in the scene. They should also have the ability to be deposited in the gamer’s brain, so that he would play and know, yeah, red is my enemy, or oh, the yellow ledge, you can definitely climb there.
Of course depending on your ruleset or mechanics you may have two or more color IDs. We are talking about two, since many classic competitive games are based on the battle of exactly two factions. Two-player play sessions or team battles benefit greatly from the use of two mutually exclusive faction color IDs.
Examples of https://slottiocasinouk.com/mobile-app/ more color identifiers.
Examples of more color identifiers.
Examples of more color identifiers.
The same goes for naming an environment for two or more commands. For example, as we can see in these slides below. Since competitive games must be balanced, the game locations of 2 teams are often identical to each other, so we have to color not only the players, but also their territory, so that we, as the user, understand where to go to fight.
Of course, there are many other uses for color differentiation. Some even with additional symbolic or emotional meaning. Such as moral systems of good and evil, various powers and resources and much more. However, the distinction in games between teams A and B requires clear color communication, and designers prefer to make the two preferred color identifiers as opposite to each other as possible.
They do this by creating a striking contrast of warm and cold. Blue and red are often preferred colors to contrast with cool or warm primary or secondary counterparts. This gives us the contrast between red and blue, red and green, or blue and orange. We can see all this on the color wheel below.
Also, that’s not all, as a level designer you can’t just designate certain characters with colors, when planning how your characters, environments and props should be colored, you need to pay a lot of attention to materials, mood, symbolism and emotional impact.
Notice how the colors red and blue are used in a mutually exclusive way, and how the neutral background colors allow the red and blue objects to stand out:
But the gameplay also has its own requirements. You should definitely consider using spacers and neutral shades to play with. These devices are very effective for marking objects, not only because of how readable they are, but also because of how often these colors are used and how trained the player is to detect them, roughly speaking, blue and red are used throughout life as an identification of something and the player intuitively understands what it means.
And from all of the above, we can conclude that red and blue are suitable for such tasks like no other, starting with the fact that they have been used in sports and in other areas for many years, ending with the fact that they are complete opposites, both from the point of view of color characteristics in general, and from psychological and physiological ones, and they also meet all the criteria of color identifiers in games.
We can even break it all down point by point:
It’s already in our heads. These are the colors that come to your mind first when determining two opponents, let me guess blue and red or black and white.
I think we answered the question why red and blue, now let’s move on.
After all this you can say, what difference does it make whether it’s red or blue, it still doesn’t affect anything. But in fact there is a difference, but partly it’s not big.
Difference between red and blue
To make this clear, let’s take a quick trip out of gaming and into real life, to 2005, where a study by Russell Hill and Robert Barton called the Hill and Barton Theory, respectively, was conducted on how the color red enhances human performance. One experiment examined Olympic athletes competing one-on-one in "combat sports" such as boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and freestyle wrestling.
The rules of the Olympics stipulate that one participant will be randomly assigned a blue suit and the other a red one. Thus, this was the perfect opportunity for a natural experiment on the effect of uniform color on performance.
Researchers found that those who wore red uniforms won a statistically significantly larger proportion of their matches.
Which shows us how the color of a uniform can affect performance in a competitive sport.
This is because the color red throughout nature is associated with increased aggressiveness and dominance. Using the color red makes participants think more about being, as stated, more aggressive and dominant. And this is important in sports like boxing or some kind of wrestling, where aggression makes you more competitive. In turn, the participant in blue can aggravate the effect by considering his red opponent more intimidating. It can even be on a subconscious level.
We can see the same thing in video games. At least sometimes. One 2008 study published in the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior extracted data from 1,347 matches in Unreal Tournament 2004.
They found that red teams won about 5% more matches than blue teams, which is much more than would be expected based on simple chance.
And by the way, the results of the study were recognized by Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein, but said that in the near future they still will not change the classic colors since they are an integral part of the Unreal Tournament multiplayer game series.
There is a caveat to this, however: the red effect is small and will not be a deciding factor in anything other than a very competitive fight. That is, a strong player or athlete will never lose to a weak one just because he is in a red uniform.
But you are interested in a fact about the confrontation between red and blue. Based on the game Halo filmed a series "Red vs Blue" is an American machinima web series created in 2003.
Machinima is a way of displaying short story sketches and videos shot using three-dimensional graphics based on computer games.
The plot of the series is centered around the confrontation between two factions – Red and Blue in a civil war in the center of a desert canyon (Bloody Gorge). "Red vs Blue" appeared from voice-over commentary of the gameplay of the game Halo: Combat Evolved on drunkgamers.com, where, in particular, the discussion related to the Vepr car was restored in the second episode of the first season. Seeing the potential for a full-fledged plot, a trailer was created, which was released on September 5, 2002 on the same website. After which the journey of this series began.
Well, in the games themselves, our colors have overcome a giant path to embed themselves into our thinking, giving us a clear association of what they are used for.
Team Forteress, TABS, Chivalry, For Honor, the halo series and much, much more from casual games on mobile to AAA projects, you can’t count them all. Almost everywhere, the identifier colors that separate teams into friends and foes are red and blue. Yes, what can we say, they are found everywhere even in gaming devices. The first thing that comes to mind is Nintendo Switch.
Where there is a blue and red joycon, which means that you will play competitive games with your friends and find out who is the coolest of you. This applies to joeys from Playstation and X-Box. It seems that red and blue have become irreplaceable in our games.
Let’s sum it up
Red and blue, blue and red – these colors have been and will remain irreplaceable in the gaming sphere, neither in a year, nor in the distant future. These colors, like no other, are suitable for performing the function of differentiation due to their properties, designers are already masterfully integrating them into any genre of games, and you and I don’t even notice it, since we are used to it and it has become on a subconscious level. I think we have answered all the questions raised earlier and now we know a little more. All we can do is pay more attention to these colors in games, to be surprised at how many there are, and to choose which side you are on.
Best comments
Clear and concise) Gracias!
Thanks to everyone for the criticism) Well, as they say, it’s crazy, so we’ll change the approach next time.
I’ll take into account all the above points, let it be a kick for me to do better =D
Yes, I didn’t even say that I was the first)
And your comment on DTF also made me happy 
This is what I understand as a blog, I hope the mower will collect
Blue for luck, and red goes fasta. What’s there to disassemble??
I agree that overall it is very long. The message is clear, an article on a simple topic that no one usually seems to think about, and usually the trick of such materials is that a seemingly simple topic turns out to have some kind of feint conclusion at the end, which opens the topic for a person from a different angle, you don’t have such a feint.
In general, try, check the facts, study the materiel)
Hi all! Today I would like to talk about white and black colors in games.
I think many of you have noticed that lately games have become very oversaturated with these colors. When I started playing games, I thought it was normal because everyone was playing the same thing and no one was going to say, “Oh my god, these colors suck.”! Why couldn’t they make it gray?». It was fine until I became a gamer myself. Nowadays, many game designers, when they start working on a game, are required to make it in white or black. But why? Why did they decide to completely get rid of other colors except white and black?? Let’s figure it out.
So, what is white color?? This is the best quality color. In psychology, it is considered a neutral color, since it has the same effect on everyone. White color is the color of purity and absence of impurities. Black is the opposite of white. It is considered a color filled with deep meaning. But what happened to the games?? Why did designers decide to add these colors and why is it now so fashionable to play games that are all white or all black??
Let’s look at everything in order. Let’s start with the fact that games are now oversaturated with white color. In most games we can see the color white, and if it is not used, it can still be found. We can come across games where the color white is used to highlight something from the background. What else is white used for?? To highlight details, such as icons. White color is also used to highlight inscriptions and buttons. In order to highlight text and icons, games use white color.
Now let’s look at the color black. Black is considered the color of elegance, mystery and luxury. It is associated with night, darkness and darkness. But at the same time, black is a color that means restraint, severity, elegance and wealth. Nowadays this color is used extremely rarely. And this fact is very sad. After all, in the old days black was quite popular. Remember how women used to dress: black or dark blue clothes. Some parts of the body, such as teeth or lips, were also painted black. They also used it to highlight an object and make it stand out more. As in the case of white, now black is used very rarely. If you want to make something brighter, then feel free to use black.
In conclusion, I would like to say that you should not be afraid to experiment with color. Each color carries something of its own, special and unlike others. The main thing is to find your favorite color and do everything only in it.
I corrected you. Nobody says “damn lumpy”, they say “first damn lumpy”, which will not suit you, t.To. There are already 5 blogs. So you chose a shitty metaphor.