51 replies to this topic

[Dohregard]

That difference is small enough to be dismissed as negligible and meaningless.

yup

[Utttand4]

55% - 45%, id say its a statistical tie. If it were 60% - 40%, i would think you're on to something.

For TF2, the reason red is winning more is because the maps are imbalanced in red's favour most of the time.

And thanks for the link to Orange Box stats, i found this:

LOL at the waterfall at the start of HL2 Ep2 being a RED death hotspot, while the areas with actual enemies are all blue.

[Joby]

Hmm, I guess you're right

[ThaddeusK]

when i played ut2004 i always found blue alot harder to see than red, thats why i changed it to red v green when i started playin on TAM servers/dm with utcomp, but that would make being on blue easier...errr...

i suppose their reason kinda makes sense...alittle

[ya_ba]

Maybe the better players just prefer the colour red over the colour blue?
Look, the differences are so tiny that I'm not sure that it's evern decisive...

[the_wandererererrr]

Hmm, I guess you're right

NICE

and btw mr i-can-post-death-maps, FACT: in all my experience of playing video games, the defending team should always win or get the most points. play evolves -- that fact is the lynchpin of peoples' strategies.

also FACT: mr fathead is a dbag.

no disputing it now, because i said FACT in front of it.

[ThaddeusK]

i was reading the OP again and i noticed something...

The scientists studied the outcomes of 1,347 matchups between elite teams playing "Unreal Tournament 2004," a so-called first-person shooter game. The main activity in the game is running around and shooting at the avatars of the opposing team.

The game results for the Unreal Tournament study were culled from public servers used by players around the world. Moldovan worked with researchers at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania, on the study.

pubs = elite teams?

[the_wandererererrr]

pubs = elite teams?

dont act like you've never played a random pub game with an awesome group of guys. those times are elite as fuck.

[Dark.Matter]

dont act like you've never played a random pub game with an awesome group of guys. those times are elite as fuck.

I doubt the people who did the study even know the difference between pub and competitive play.

[ThaddeusK]

dont act like you've never played a random pub game with an awesome group of guys. those times are elite as fuck.

generally a random grouping of skilled players who dont communicate would still not be considered an elite team

[Shadowstar]

55% isn't that much to make a real difference.

[anatomy187]

also FACT: mr fathead is a dbag.

How are you not banned yet...

[backtofront]

when i played ut2004 i always found blue alot harder to see than red, thats why i changed it to red v green when i started playin on TAM servers/dm with utcomp, but that would make being on blue easier...errr...

i suppose their reason kinda makes sense...alittle

You know that's a very good point. The fact that DM-Deck17 is one of the most popular UT2004 pub maps, this could easily make up the %5. That map is red red red... hugely imbalanced in favour of any red skin team because they're so damn hard to see.

That's why we deathmatchers swear by good customisable brightskins:

[Mares]

I love RED!


also

Well this is how they make money when they're not curing cancer

[arcade_freek]

Am I the only one who is utterly amused by the generous amounts of butthurt in this thread?

what a clever ruse... indeed...

also, excuse me my ignorance, but in my ol' times CTF and DM matchs were played twice per map, once per "side" of the map to avoid "zOMFG IMBA" complains...

P.S: that last sentence should have been phrased as a question: what is the common practice today in UT2k4 and TF2, to switch just SIDES of the map, preserving the color of the team, or to switch colors because the positions in the map are fixed for each color? (in tournaments and casual playing?)

[Dark.Matter]

I'm glad you get off on the 'butthurt', arcade. It seems to be a common theme with every thread you make.

Step 1: Make thread with outlandish claims backed by little or faulty evidence.
Step 2: People rebuttal with common logic and question the data.
Step 3: You make snide remarks and flamebait about how everyone is butthurt because they disagree with you.



Really. I know you think you are such a clever troll, but your childish musing prove very little. No one really cares if one color wins more than the other, let alone are 'butthurt' over it. It doesn't affect anyone here on a personal level.

[arcade_freek]

Step 1: Make thread with outlandish claims backed by little or faulty evidence.

It didn't seem outlandish to me -gotta say that it seemed almost obvious to me- ... you have no idea of how many subtleties are involved in our psychology, dude. Also, there's this little thing called "peer-reviewed" journals that check studies before they get published. If the evidence is faulty or little, it's their claim, not ours.

We have not seen the original article, just a summary made by a journalist. So the quality of the evidence is out of discussion. Also, I've not seen anyone providing better evidence beyond the usual gut-reactions these kind of stuff bring out of you guys....

Step 2: People rebuttal with common logic and question the data.

Common logic? Truthiness, I say. In a world full of science-haters, what else can be done? I just found that study interesting. I value discussion, but I just can't appreciate teenagers ranting because a study contradicts their beloved intuitions... You know what's funny? Non-scientist gamers bashing Non-gamer scientists, making the study invalid because they don't know much about games while ignoring the fact most of you don't do science... The authors just made the math in one game, and the study can be replicated further. Also, another study was cited about the red color being more prominent in winners on RL sports... if you don't believe it, big deal. But saying it's shit because you don't believe it?

Step 3: You make snide remarks and flamebait about how everyone is butthurt because they disagree with you.

Read again the thread. If this isn't butthurt, then we need a better definition...

Really. I know you think you are such a clever troll, but your childish musing prove very little. No one really cares if one color wins more than the other, let alone are 'butthurt' over it. It doesn't affect anyone here on a personal level.

So, why the angry replies? I didn't even posted my opinion until now... I just posted a study from a journal FFS...

Anyway, actually, thanks for caring. And also, here's the abstract of the original article summarized in the quote in the OP, for good measure (I don't have access to this journal so I'll have to wait to get my hands on it):

ABSTRACT

In the 2004 Olympic Games, opponents wearing red athletic uniforms were more likely to win against opponents wearing blue uniforms. To investigate whether this color bias extends to the world of virtual competition, we compared the performance of red and blue teams in a popular multiplayer first-person-shooter (FPS) computer game. For 3 consecutive months, we collected data from a publicly available global statistics server. Outcomes from 1,347 matches played by the top 10 players on the same virtual arena were included. Red teams won 54.9% of matches, and this effect was highly significant. Our data suggest that joining the red team may offer a slight advantage over the blue team in virtual competition, and this should be accounted for when designing FPS games. It is likely that “seeing red” may trigger a powerful psychological distractor signal in human aggressive competition that can affect the outcome of sports and virtual contests alike.

Andrei Ilie, Silvia Ioan, Leon Zagrean, Mihai Moldovan. Better to Be Red than Blue in Virtual Competition. CyberPsychology & Behavior. June 1, 2008, 11(3): 375-377. doi:10.1089/cpb.2007.0122.

[ThaddeusK]

P.S: that last sentence should have been phrased as a question: what is the common practice today in UT2k4 and TF2, to switch just SIDES of the map, preserving the color of the team, or to switch colors because the positions in the map are fixed for each color? (in tournaments and casual playing?)

in ut2004 you didnt switch because the CTF maps were generally symmetric and in tdm color doesnt affect where you spawn, i believe you do switch in TF2, although i dont know.

Also, I've not seen anyone providing better evidence beyond the usual gut-reactions these kind of stuff bring out of you guys....

ooo, i got one, in ut2004 there is an option to set preferred team, which is set to Red by default, now assuming most people dont bother changing it since its kinda a pointless setting seeing as there is no difference between the two colors in ut2004, then Red would in theory always have the same or more players than blue, since if blue was down by one it would balance it, and if they are even it would go by preferred color, which we are assuming is red. So taking into account the ability to change this setting to blue or neither and that blue might just have better people, 5% more seems reasonable... and while that has a number of assumptions in it, its about the same as the study itself which assumed that everything was constant except for the colors, and that if the colors were neutral than it would be 50-50, which is quite likely not the case.

also, just believing something just because there is one study about it is probably just as bad for science as hating science. indeed, most of the scientific community realizes this and is the whole point of the peer-review system...

[anatomy187]

most of you don't do science...

If watching and keeping track of the scores in a video game is science then every competitive gamer is a fucking scientist.

if you don't believe it, big deal. But saying it's shit because you don't believe it?

Did someone actually say they don't believe it? I mean I thought the study was next to pointless but you can't really say it's wrong, you can just say that it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

[the_wandererererrr]

he means that you don't believe the findings are significant, mr fathead

and psychology is a science. apparently the experiment was done for cyberpsychology, which i know because i read the fucking article