Researchers: Red players beat blue in online game
I don’t think we do a lot of linking to news stories, but I feel that this deserves mention because our resident host (Phokal) has an oddly ocd fetish with being on the red team. Apparently, he knew something that we didn’t.
According to scientific research, the Red team beats the Blue team in more matches. They did a study of 1,347 online matches of Unreal tournament 2004 and they found that the red team won 55% of the time. I had always thought that Phokal’s ability to destroy me in games was due to quick reflexes, an acute sense of 3d space when viewed through a 2d plane, and a pair of superthumbs that even Fonzie would covet. I guess the truth is that he’s just always been on the red team.
Hah. I thought of posting this and you beat me to it.
My ‘love’ of Red team hearkens back to Team Fortress for Quake 1. I never liked constantly switching sides in CTF for Quake; it was confusing which side to shoot. So I wanted to pick one side and just associate the other with enemy.
I liked to play the Pyro in TF,…the red Pyro looked appropriate shooting a flame thrower while the blue one just looked odd. I joined the Red Army and haven’t looked back since.
Nowadays we get almost completely random teams in games like CoD4 (US, Middle East, and Soviet factions) or GTA4 that all look fairly similar. Or games like America’s Army, where you are always on America’s side, and the enemy always looks like Terrorists… and the perspective is vice versa for the other team.
Remember: Blue sucks. Red rules.