Choosing Red Team Could Help You Win Every Time
Anyone who is playing Halo 3 or any other type of shoot ‘em up game may want to consider donning the red color if you hope to win. A new study is being conducted to show that red will always (or almost always) beat out blue in online shooter games.
The study – which will be published in the Cyberpsychology & Behavior Journal – tracked 1500 matches in Unreal Tournament in 2004. The game splits players into two different teams – the red and blue teams. There is nothing different between the two teams except that they are two different colors. This means that there should be no advantage over the other when playing.
Yet, Researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark found that the red team won 55% of the matches. Rather than chalking that up to dumb luck, the scientists behind the study believe it has more to do with the inherent qualities of red as a psychological distractor and a natural signal of male dominance, a thought echoed in a 2005 study linking the color to enhanced performance in real-life sports.
Of course despite this study there won’t be any game publishers who will change things around. “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 Marc Rein, vice president of Epic Games, in an AP story. “We don’t anticipate any immediate changes to team colors.”
