Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I saw this video today on Youtube about the psychological effects of playing on the blue or red team in video games. According to the video blue is a cool, calming colour and puts you in the right frame of mind for forward thinking and planning strategies whereas red is a more aggressive, impulsive colour and might make your army seem more intimidating to your opponent.

The first half of the video is specifically about video games but if you skip to around 8 minutes in there's some research about why certain colours give different results and the psychological effects of blue and red in sports.



Do you guys think there's something to this? For example if your army was painted blue it might subconsciously make you think more of the long term strategy of the game, whereas a with a red army you might play more aggressively.

What do you reckon?

Yea Red in sporting can have an advantage. I watched a documentary on how different peoples see different colors etc and how colours effect people. Who knows how acurate but the tests they showed seemed convincing.

ALL my armies have red in it because personally I find red a striking colour. I think you find red is a prominent feature in MANY images designed to stir up courage and so on.

Red all the way for me.

You know, when I first saw the thread title I almost thought it was like some kind of troll post or just going to be something really stupid, but that does make an awful lot of sense. Never thought about that before.

Red ones go faster !

 CURNOW wrote:
Red ones go faster !

You misspelled wunz.


The Auld Grump - who mostly plays dark colors....

So, does purple have a mix effect? (Kinda kidding, but I'm also curious if this has any sort of psychological effect). I'm also now making some DoW Armies featuring blue everywhere, and seeing how much it helps once my friends get around to playing it again.

Interesting, but what I'm curious about is how camoflague affects someone, because literally every army I have is painted in dark, subdued Camo. (Except my Tau, and they look like Stormtroopers with some Camo.)

The effect is there, but it's doubtful it's significant enough to affect individual games in an outright meaningful way. While it might make a person reconsider some choices, playing well even with a different set of choices is still going to win.

Youtube videos aren't the best for accurately representing anything.

Funny story about camouflage though, in and old scifi wargame I painted up some of my troops in a really good forest camo scheme. Then, in the middle of playing a game, I completely forgot about one of those units that were sitting in a some forest terrain because my brain lost track of them.

I have a friend that painted a Panther battletech mech bright pink, so that his opponents would should at it first.

I think your colour assessment might only apply for a Western perspective.

Here, the colour red is lucky and equates to fortune (sounds like wealth), while sharing the character of 'work.'

Blue, shares a sound with 'lazy' so is seen as an inauspicious colour.

Green is a terrible colour for human soldiers (due to an old insult).

There's a lot more, but that's some basic stuff.

On second thought, perhaps the blue matches with Western blue (if I fudge it by saying 'laid back' rather than 'lazy' which can be a word for 'relaxed').

That also applies to say, certain peoples of Africa, where it literally changes what colors they can perceive based on the names of colors and their associations with them.

An example was that in a certain people in Africa where the names of something like the color of sky and something else common were the same. It ended up that they couldn't even perceive a easily identifiable color to most other cultures. Meanwhile, they gained an extraordinary ability to see drastically small changes in a particular few colors that I couldn't see even with my art training. All this due to how their language and culture presented the colors to them.

 Vertrucio wrote:


Funny story about camouflage though, in and old scifi wargame I painted up some of my troops in a really good forest camo scheme. Then, in the middle of playing a game, I completely forgot about one of those units that were sitting in a some forest terrain because my brain lost track of them.

i've seen this happen to people more than a few times over the years...
camo does its job a little too well sometimes...

i am definitely in the paint it red camp...
it says "fear me!!!" much more than blue ever could...
Blood Angels over Ultramarines every time, and Khorne take them all...

cheers
jah

Wonder what effect colours like pink or pastels have.

I can honestly say I would have never even given this a thought if not for this thread.

I tend to paint in a lot of neutrals (future scheme will be white heavy), so I'm not sure what kind of effect - if any - that would have.

Interesting though.

Having a propainted army at a higher level event / a recognized army may have an impact on the other player

In 5th edition there was a handful of razorwolves/blood angel players that had golden daemon level armies that played at the ETC - to a normal player they looked absurd

 Blacksails wrote:
I can honestly say I would have never even given this a thought if not for this thread.

I tend to paint in a lot of neutrals (future scheme will be white heavy), so I'm not sure what kind of effect - if any - that would have.

I can't imagine army color having any effect on the course of a wargame, unless like above, your lost some camoed units. XD

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 CURNOW wrote:
Red ones go faster !

You misspelled wunz.


The Auld Grump - who mostly plays dark colors....

Everyone knows that this is the most important rule about color - everyone knows red makes you faster. Even better if you're holding a knife while in red!