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First Person Shooters (Games) Entertainment Games Science

The Red Team Wins 299

Posted by CowboyNeal from the every-last-leg-up dept.
Voltageaav writes "Recent studies indicate that in both First Person Shooters and even athletic competitions, wearing red gives you an advantage. It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry." Of course the Blue Team loses — as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.
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The Red Team Wins More

The Red Team Wins

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  • I disagree. (Score:4, Funny)

    by TomRK1089 ( 1270906 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:05AM (#23791207)
    The Boston Red Sox.

    • Re:I disagree. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by menace3society ( 768451 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:10AM (#23791245)
      Yeah, the only case I can think of where the guy wearing red always wins in bullfighting, and that's kind of rigged.

      As an aside, people also turn red when they are embarrassed or drunk, so wouldn't the psychological effect cancel itself out?

      • Does Red Cost You More? (Score:5, Informative)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:51AM (#23791523) Homepage Journal
        "Yeah, the only case I can think of where the guy wearing red always wins in bullfighting, and that's kind of rigged.

        As an aside, people also turn red when they are embarrassed or drunk, so wouldn't the psychological effect cancel itself out?"

        Funny...I remember when I bought a red Corvette...that everyone told me not to get red, because it would make your insurance higher. I'd heard that all my life.

        I called State Farm and asked them if color mattered as to my insurance rate. Nope.

        What matters is your driving record, your sex, the price of the car (repairs), and it seems these days strangely enough...your credit rating?!?!

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by strabes ( 1075839 )
          I think the idea is that red cars get in more accidents or something. It's either the personality of people who buy red cars or that red distracts other drivers and subconsciously causes them to hit red cars. I tend to think it's the latter because I've owned a red car (that I bought used for a great deal - color wasn't important to me) for close to four years now and I don't regularly have to swerve to avoid getting hit by people who are distracted by my fire engine red car.

        • Re:Does Red Cost You More? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) <sexwithanimals@gmail.com> on Saturday June 14, 2008 @10:33AM (#23791807) Homepage
          Red is more of a 'HEY POLICE OFFICER, CHECK MY SPEED' color. And you'll end up getting more tickets. And since it's a flashy red car, the officer will be less likely to make it into a warning. So, yes, your insurance rate will be higher.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cjb658 ( 1235986 )

            Red is more of a 'HEY POLICE OFFICER, CHECK MY SPEED' color. And you'll end up getting more tickets. And since it's a flashy red car, the officer will be less likely to make it into a warning. So, yes, your insurance rate will be higher.
            Well, your rates will be higher because of the tickets. But my insurance company doesn't even ask what color my car is.

            Does your insurance pays for your tickets?

          • Red is more of a 'HEY POLICE OFFICER, CHECK MY SPEED' color. And you'll end up getting more tickets. And since it's a flashy red car, the officer will be less likely to make it into a warning. So, yes, your insurance rate will be higher.

            Unless you don't speed.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          What matters is your driving record, your sex, the price of the car (repairs), and it seems these days strangely enough...your credit rating?!?!
          Yeah, turns out the actuaries discovered a close correlation between bad credit (poor decision-making skills) and bad driving (poor decision-making skills). That, and people with bad credit skip out on their bills more often.

        • Re:Does Red Cost You More? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by DavidD_CA ( 750156 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @12:44PM (#23792687) Homepage
          I have heard from more than one patrol officer that they will likely see a speeding red car more often than a speeding car of any other color.

          So while your insurance company won't fault you for getting red, your chances of getting a ticket increases. And, with more tickets, your insurance rate goes up.

          There might be statistics out there to back me up, or not.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )
            Eyes are sensitive to green. The complimentary color - red, blurs as a result to our sensitivity to green, thus making it easier to detect speed. I've noticed this watching car drive by - green ones always looked defined while red ones always blurred as they drove by.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by The Dobber ( 576407 )
        The Red Shirted ensigns might disagree with this.

    • Chicago Cubs?

      (except this year)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hassman ( 320786 )
        They wear blue predominately. ie: "Cubbie Blue"

        Chicago Bulls probably. Have they won a game since Jordan left? =P

    • The Boston Red Sox.
      And furthermore... The Cincinnati Reds.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by owlnation ( 858981 )
        And in fact, the Phillies wear a color that's more or less red.

        The Phillies are officially the losing-est team of any sport, anywhere. More than 10,000 loses.

        Back to the lab folks, I think "D" isn't quite "Q.E." yet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LilGuy ( 150110 )
          Did you see them clean house last night? I don't even watch baseball but it was on at the bar and the Phillies CREAMED the St. Louis Cardinals. Last I saw it was 20 - 2 in the 8th inning.

          Not sure how they can be the losing-est team when they slaughtered like that.
          • I loved it. I'm working in St. Louis right now and got crap in the restaurant for wearing a Diamond Backs search only to see the Cardinals get pummeled by the Phillies scoring 20 runs.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by jonaskoelker ( 922170 )

          I think "D" isn't quite "Q.E." yet.

          Demonstrated isn't quite that which was to have been? ;)

          Q.E.D. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase "quod erat demonstrandum" (literally, "that which was to have been demonstrated")

          [citation needed [wikipedia.org]].

          I'm guessing quod=what, erat=was-to-have-been, demonstrandum=demonstrated. So the Q. isn't quite D.E. (with emphasis on the E., I guess), as it's still to-be-shown.

          You can mod me -1 Nitpicking People Called Romanes They Go The House now.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by eumaeus ( 733945 )
            Latin nit-pick: quod = that which erat = was demonstrandum = a-to-be-demonstrated-thing The construction is the "passive periphrastic".
    • And on the other side of the coin, the New England Patriots have done alright the last decade or so.
    • The Washington RedSkins.
    • Nobody mentioned the Detroit Red Wings. There wear the most red out of all these teams, and they won the Stanley Cup this year. I think they help prove the author's point on this. Red team wins.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AlpineR ( 32307 )
      Baseball isn't exactly the most aggressive sport. I don't think an outfielder will overthrow the ball because he sees an opponent in a red jersey 250 feet away. (That is, even if the Red Sox did wear lots of red.)

    • I also disagree, and cite as evidence the sport of paintball. Paintball is both a sport and a first person shooter, so it *ought* to fall right into the researchers target zone, but it doesn't. This is because any minor psychological advantage you might get is completely overwhelmed by how obvious a target you are. People quickly notice and blast you, even if only the smallest part of you is showing. That can also hold true in speedball as well as woodsball, and even in realistic computer FPS's (because red

    • Not to mentione the Red New England Patriots losing to the Blue New York Giants in the Superbowl.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by readin ( 838620 )
      The Boston Red Sox

      The Chicago Cubs

  • TF2 Stats say... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LastToKnow ( 449735 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:06AM (#23791227) Homepage
    Especially if you're playing on Goldrush [steampowered.com] (last graph is wins per team per map

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DanWS6 ( 1248650 )
      That has more to do with the design of the map since each team switches color when going from offense to defense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Das Modell ( 969371 )
      Goldrush is an asymmetric map where the blue team attacks and the red team defends.

    • Re:TF2 Stats say... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 777a ( 826468 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:24AM (#23791327)
      The fine article is a little light on details, only mentioning Unreal Tournament, but in Team Fortress 2 there is a good reason red win more (bottom chart in parents link).

      In any of the Attack / Defend maps blue plays the attackers, and red plays the defenders.

      To keep things fair the attackers respawn a lot quicker than the defenders (since the attacker has to respawn and run halfway across the map, while the defender usually respawns only a short walk from the final defence point).

      Since waiting 10 to 20 seconds to respawn is pretty boring a lot of servers reduce the respawn rate, this gives a major advantage to the defenders (red).

      So why do red have a slight advantage in other TF2 maps? After someone has played TF2 many hours, they'll realise that they generally win more as red, they may not analyse why they win more, but the end result is players with a lot of TF2 experience tend to join the red team without really thinking about it.

      Personally I think Tribes 2 did it right, the enemy always is red.

      • Camouflage (Score:2, Informative)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )
        I think it has more to do with the fact that the general color palette is reddish orange, and one team wears reddish orange, while the other wears blueish black. This is a pretty good study on how well camouflage actually works. They do make it a little easier to see the snipahs than in real life (TF2 snipahs wear a black vest and black pants) vs. real life snipers who are usually wearing a blanket covered in shrubbery. But overall it looks like camouflage grants you a 5% increase in Win.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        Problem is Both those games the "team color" is a insignificant part of your costume. Games where the red and blue teams are OBVOIUS, I'll take blue every time. I dont want to stand out in a sniper scope with red. Urban Terror for example. Red teeam menber can be spotted from a mile away in a sniper scope. Blue are harder to lock on to with twitch reaction.

  • Red team, but not... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kryogen1x ( 838672 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:12AM (#23791253)
    Red shirts! [wikipedia.org]

  • Eve Online (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:12AM (#23791255)
    I'm in a corp in Eve Online, a heavy player v player orientated spaceship game.

    With Eve, a hostile ship that is attacking you is displayed on screen, and also on the overview as a flashing red bar - the flashing red showing that the enemy ship has you targeted and is activating modules upon you with hostile intent.

    One of the first things we do with newcomers to our corp/Eve is tell them to change the overview colour of a hostile ship from a flashing red to a solid green.

    The change has had noticable effect. Before people would see the red and get an adrenaline boost, often resulting in them freezing for long enough to lose the battle. When seeing a solid green stating a metaphorical 'go go go!' as opposed to a red screaming 'Danger!' the newcomers perform better and freeze less often.

  • I thought wearing red gets you killed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Werrismys ( 764601 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:13AM (#23791263)
    Too much TOS.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ninjas wore red. More so than the typical black outfit you see today. It wasn't a bright shiny red though, but rather a dark brownish kind.

      Thing is, that red is the lowest frequency color which gives it some special properties in low light.
      The brown red mentioned above looks almost blacker than black in the night, and the outlines blur.
      The eye is simply not very responsive to it.

      I don't think this is why red wins in FPS shooters though, but who knows.

      The eye has other problems with *blue* though.

  • WAAGH! (Score:5, Informative)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:15AM (#23791277)
    "Da red wunz go fasta!"

  • I'm black..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chineseyes ( 691744 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:20AM (#23791309)
    It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry."

    I'm black, I can't turn red you insensitive clod.
  • I think its more like any team coached by Jose Mourinho wins, no metter if it is blue, green or naked. I mean ManU, Liverpool and Arsenal (all red) looked very angry all the time, but his *blue* team won everything, every time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )
      Also, wearing red doesn't help Polish representation much - in major sporting events they typically win only in third game, the one that's solely for "honor" ;P
  • from TFA

    Neuroscientist Mihai Moldovan of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said the reason was most likely that the color red may act as a psychological distractor for men, possibly because men flush and turn red when they're angry.

    Anyone who has ever had a girlfriend KNOWS that women flush and turn red! And NOT just when they are angry! ...neuro"scientist"...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )
      That wouldn't necessarily be at odds with the interpratation from the article - so that red would not only intimidate you, but also could send a message of submission/beeing in control/etc., perhaps? (causing you to underestimate your enemy)

      But anyway, if what I just wrote is more or less correct, I'd guess it would be very gender/situation specific, so it doesn't really mess with original interpreation.

  • Please wear red... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:30AM (#23791375)
    ...if you are my opponent in Day Of Defeat (I'll keep the camo) ;-)

  • Selection bias (Score:5, Funny)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:30AM (#23791379)
    The results would have been the other way around if they hadn't stacked the deck by removing Star Trek crewmen from consideration.
  • This might explain:

    The Detroit Red Wings, the closest thing to a winning "dynasty" in the days of free-agency hockey. (4 Stanley Cups in 11 years). (Red & White hockey sweaters.)

    And the Detroit Lions... perennial losers, only a handful of playoff appearances in 40 years, and no chance of winning anything anytime in the forseeable future. (Blue & Grey [and black] jerseys)

    Or it could be decades of lackluster mis-management by the Lions owners (the Ford family), and a passionate winning attitude fro

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by silver6 ( 1203428 )
      Also the Montreal Canadians who have the biggest Stanley Cup dynasty of all time wear red too, although they haven't done so good lately.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 )
      The Detroit Red Wings, the closest thing to a winning "dynasty" in the days of free-agency hockey. (4 Stanley Cups in 11 years). (Red & White hockey sweaters.)
      And the Detroit Lions... perennial losers, only a handful of playoff appearances in 40 years, and no chance of winning anything anytime in the forseeable future. (Blue & Grey [and black] jerseys)
      Or it could be decades of lackluster mis-management by the Lions owners (the Ford family), and a passionate winning attitude from the competent Red Wi
  • The implicit assumption seems to be that good players don't prefer to be on the red team.

    • Quite. There's no mention of any random allocation of colours, so better or more aggressive players might simply be choosing to play as red. I find this explanation far more likely.

      This might then turn into a self-fulfilling finding as good experienced players start to choose red because they think there's an advantage, then suddenly there is a real difference between the colours.

  • Maybe winners just like the color red.
  • For a fixed number of games, there's always a bit of uncertainty about what the true probability of red winning is. The more games analysed the less this uncertainty will be.

    So, to look at what this study actually tells us, we can use some simple statistics [wikipedia.org] to determine what range of probabilities we're 99.999% sure the true probability of red winning lies within. (This is example #3: "The coin is tossed...").

    And the answer is, given 1,347 trials (games) with a 55% red-wins outcome, the true value lies som

  • Of course the Blue Team loses, as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.
    The Dallas Cowboys wear blue and they have the highest overall winning percentage all-time (includes playoffs) and even though they've only been around since 1960 they have the most playoff wins of any NFL team. (32 playoff wins, 5 of them Super Bowl wins)

    The Bears has the most total wins. (677) Of course they've been around since the birth of dirt!
  • In the late 1980s, I had the pleasure of observing some Red Team training activities at Fort Irwin [army.mil] in California. This is the US Army's premiere force-on-force training environment. They have a remarkably competent Opposing Force unit, and they're quite skilled at using non-US equipment and tactics against the visiting Blue Team battalions. Yes, this is big stuff - training at the battalion and brigade level.

    "Red Team Wins," and they generally do.
    • OPFOR trains more than any other unit in the US Army. They are actually a combat ready brigade that happens to 'fight' the most. Every unit that trains at Fort Irwin trains against the same guys over and over. There's little surprise that they should have a significant advantage.

  • Reminds me... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Some1too ( 1242900 )
    I can't remember there where and when but there is someone out there pushing to have emergency exits signs and lights changed from red color to a green color for this very same reason. When we see a red traffic light we stop. In North America (and I assume several other continents) stop signs are also red. In an emergency the few seconds of hesitation possibly generated by a red light instead of a green light might cost lives. It was an interesting subject matter and seems to make sense. Wonder if we'll

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In Sweden all exit and emergency signs have a green background with white text.
  • I am unaffected by this "red means angry" distraction. I can't see red; I'm colorblind.

    Wait, is that why the red team is completely invisible to me? No wonder they keep winning.

    The blue team, on the other hand, stands out quite nicely.
  • In particular, the results of the 2000 presidential election.

    Why can't Democratic states be "red states"?

  • a test of the theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gearoid_Murphy ( 976819 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @10:42AM (#23791875)
    They should try switching the perceived colours of multiplayer teams and observe the result. For example, some games always show the enemy as red and friendlies as blue. Reversing this might have a noticeable effect on the game play and consequently lead the way to isolating the effect of team colour on our behaviour.
  • I remember reading somewhere that different colours are processed at different rates by the visual cortex, with blue being handled faster than red.

    Here [iovs.org] is an interesting looking paper on the subject, "If, however, stimuli possess good chromatic selectivity and minimize achromatic intrusions, then there is a strong dependence of RT [reaction time] on stimulus color" -- alas it seems like red invokes better reaction times going by a quick scan of it, but it is interesting that red-green and blue-yellow have d
  • that's what they're betting on...

  • Finally a rational explanation for the 2004 presidential elections!
  • I wonder this will work against the Bane in Tabula Rasa...red armor paint, here I come!
  • In Battlefield 2, the red team always wins, no matter how much I C4 the blue team to get them motivated. [for those that never played BF2, enemy is _always_ red, teammates are usually blue; your squad is green]
  • Nonsense and poppycock. Here's why. Assume you have a Red and Blue team. Now assume that the players are all males. Because the players are male you have one huge elephant in the room which cancels out your "color-win" theories. - A large percentage of males are color deficient or color blind. Now let's make this even more confusing for the color clinds: introduce two more teams; a green and a light brown. Now you have thoroughly confused the color blind males. Let's make it even more possible to disprove y

  • Colorblindness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mellow106 ( 669136 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @12:38PM (#23792669)
    Approximately 7% of males are red-green colorblind, and so have a slightly impaired ability to distiguish a red figure from a green or brown terrain. This might have something to do with it.
  • I have a harder time seeing red against earthy tones. Blue stands out like a sore thumb. I'm color blind, so that's why I have trouble quickly seeing a red player. That is something to keep in mind.
  • Did the players get to choose the color? If so, then it could be a selection effect (better players choosing red as expressive of their confidence; angrier players being both better and more likely to choose red; who knows).
  • I seem to remember a certain revolutionary war [wikipedia.org] where blue seemed to fair a bit better than red.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )
      Only if you look at the war.
      On a battle by battle basis the reds won the vast majority of battles in the US civil war.
  • Don't blame blue for the lions. Blame the blue oval...believe or not the lions actually won games before the Ford family took over..even won some national championships.

    FIRE FORD

  • Blue team has the flag
    Where did that grenade come from?
    Red team, flag returned.
  • I suppose that the Red Shirt [wikipedia.org] wins the chance to die early, rather than have to work opposite William Shattner's "acting".

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