Stumbled upon this, thought I'd share.
The next time you fire up Halo 3, you might want to wear red -- at least if you believe the findings of a new study claiming that red beats blue in online shooters.
Published in the Cyberpsychology & Behavior journal, the study tracked nearly 1500 matches in the popular first-person game, Unreal Tournament 2004. Like most online first-person shooters -- including industry-leader Halo 3 -- the game splits players into two opposing teams, one red, one blue. There are no functional differences between the two other than hue, leading most to assume that neither team would have any sort of unfair advantage over the other.
Not so fast. 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.
Don't expect game developers to suddenly spin the color wheel, however.
"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."
As of press time, calls to disgruntled colors green and yellow have not been returned.
