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A few nights ago, I was watching zlfreebird do an alternative cast for a PvP Proleague game on his livestream (forget who the players were), when one of his moderators complained about not being able to tell which units belonged to which player. At first I was baffled; the player colors for that match were red and green, and even though all the units were protoss units, you could clearly see which units belonged to which player. Then it hit me: he was color blind, and therefore having the player colors set to red and green made it very difficult for him to tell which units belonged to which player.
According to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a full 7% of american males have difficulty distinguishing between red and green (click HERE for source article). This is a huge portion of the population.
Since color blindness is so common, I think that it should definitely be taken into account by professional e-sports casters.
Since red-green color blindness is by far the most common type of color blindness, it would make sense for professional casted SC2 games to not select red and green as the player colors, especially not during a mirror matchup. Colors like red and blue, for example, would make it much easier for color-blind spectators to follow what is happening in the game.
I think that Blizzard should also provide color blind-friendly modes of the game for streamers to use. For example, a lot of players like using the setting where their units appear green and enemy units appear red. However, streamers that use this mode will make it much harder for color-blind viewers to follow their games, especially during mirror-matchups. Of course, players could just have the unit colors display the actual player colors, but many players find it confusing to have their own units appear red (if red happened to be the color that they were randomly assigned in a ladder match). I think that blizzard should provide a "color-blind mode", wherein a player could have enemy units still appear red to them but have their own units be a different color (i.e. blue, or preferably any color of their choosing).
This is not the first time that color blindness has been brought up (click HERE for a post about the difficulty that color-blind players have seeing the nuke dot). It affects a huge portion of the population (7%), and therefore is an issue that I think deserves to be addressed by those responsible for streaming and/or casting SC2 games, and I think that Blizzard should do everything they can to give proffesional observers the tools they need to provide color blind-friendly streams for our color-blind spectators.
Edit: It just occured to me that the minimap colors could be another huge issue for color-blind players. Currently, your units and buildings show up as bright green on the minimap in all player-color modes, even ones that don't color your own units green. I think this needs to change, as it could cause huge problems for color-blind players. For example, let's say that your opponent is red, and you're blue. That means that no matter what player-color mode you choose, your opponent's units will show up red on the minimap and your units will show up green. Think about the problems that could cause for someone with red-green color-blindness. Could make reacting quickly to drops very difficult.
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I would like to see blizzard to have a color blind option. Some games already have them(i think world of tanks has that option.)
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Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot.
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On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot.
Yeah. Some people don't even realize that they're color blind until they take a test or run into problems like the one I described in the OP.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
Not only player colors, but Blizz should implement Stronger Team Colors to make it easier to differentiate the two players.
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I remember this being discussed in an active thread on TL around the time of WoL beta or just after.
Bit of a shame that Blizzard still didn't provide these tools years after that.
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On April 09 2013 01:15 codonbyte wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot. Yeah. Some people don't even realize that they're color blind until they take a test or run into problems like the one I described in the OP.
And this 7% (didn't read the article, but I knew the number was pretty high) only refer to red/green. I think pretty much everyone has some kind of colorblindness (but maybe often to a degree he never recognizes it). The same as like about everyone is wearing glasses. 
But I think it's a way more problematic issue regarding nukes. I imagine it being relatively harder for colorblind people to find the red dot.
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Bisutopia19225 Posts
Most pro tournaments chose contrasting colors for teams/players so that way this isn't a major issue. I'm (red/green and purple) colorblind it hasn't been an issue for me except for a few rare times. Blizzard already has colorblind mode for WOW, but you have the options to select the colors of each player so I don't understand where there is room to complain.
On April 09 2013 01:23 Prugelhugel wrote:
But I think it's a way more problematic issue regarding nukes. I imagine it being relatively harder for colorblind people to find the red dot.
Now that's a real issue! But I assume lots of people who see well can't spot it consistently. But it's part of the game. There's no room for whining. Grow some thick skin and play through it like I have for over 10 years of starcraft. Plus no one uses nukes anyway so I think everyone is going to be just fine.
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I hate it that streamers always use the green/red color scheme. I can't see the damn difference.
We should bash blizzard for coming up with that retarded option anyway. If you add in an option to have diplomatic colors, then at least make them red and blue or yellow and blue or green and blue - to give stark contrast.
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On April 09 2013 01:23 Prugelhugel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 01:15 codonbyte wrote:On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot. Yeah. Some people don't even realize that they're color blind until they take a test or run into problems like the one I described in the OP. And this 7% (didn't read the article, but I knew the number was pretty high) only refer to red/green. I think pretty much everyone has some kind of colorblindness (but maybe often to a degree he never recognizes it). The same as like about everyone is wearing glasses. But I think it's a way more problematic issue regarding nukes. I imagine it being relatively harder for colorblind people to find the red dot.
Oh it is. There's already a thread on the nuke dot issue: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=89854
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Speaking of colors, why is it that Blizzard doesn't allow you to select your choice of color for ladder games (obviously for 1v1, you'd have to select your favorite 2 colors, etc etc)? It would be nice if I didn't have to just be red or blue every game.
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On April 09 2013 01:48 KJSharp wrote:
Speaking of colors, why is it that Blizzard doesn't allow you to select your choice of color for ladder games (obviously for 1v1, you'd have to select your favorite 2 colors, etc etc)? It would be nice if I didn't have to just be red or blue every game.
Because it'd be a good idea ^_~.
Srsly, I'd pay $10 just to have optional colors for ladder matches (1v1). It'd be like a microtransaction dealio.
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On April 09 2013 01:48 KJSharp wrote:
Speaking of colors, why is it that Blizzard doesn't allow you to select your choice of color for ladder games (obviously for 1v1, you'd have to select your favorite 2 colors, etc etc)? It would be nice if I didn't have to just be red or blue every game.
I think there's definitely a chance that they'll allow it eventually. I mean, look how long people were clammoring for the ability to watch replays with other people before Blizzard implemented that feature.
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i'd like to see an color option in the menu option tab on what color you and you're opponent should have :-D "Like the Green / Red" system, just that u can change the colors.
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On April 09 2013 02:27 IamDavY wrote:
i'd like to see an color option in the menu option tab on what color you and you're opponent should have :-D "Like the Green / Red" system, just that u can change the colors.
I agree. I generally think giving more control to the user about how the game is rendered on their end is always a good idea.
In the mean-time, I think streamers should take this into consideration when deciding what color mode to set their game to, and maybe use the red/blue color mode instead of the green-red mode for all their color blind viewers.
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I just updated the OP with some thoughts I had about the problems with the current minimap colors.
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On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot.
I see what you did there. On other note, I prefer red/blue over red/green anyways, or maybe some more exocit combinations?
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On April 14 2013 17:57 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot. I see what you did there. On other note, I prefer red/blue over red/green anyways, or maybe some more exocit combinations?
Wait... what did he do there? I didn't see what he did there, lol
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On April 23 2013 04:00 codonbyte wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2013 17:57 JustPassingBy wrote:On April 09 2013 01:13 Nekovivie wrote:
Didn't realise colour blindness was so widespread :o
7% of the playerbase is a lot. I see what you did there. On other note, I prefer red/blue over red/green anyways, or maybe some more exocit combinations? Wait... what did he do there? I didn't see what he did there, lol
You must be + Show Spoiler +colourblind. 
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I'm r/g colorblind and it's a constant annoyance in games and other computer apps that use hard to distinguish colors. FYI it rarely makes it impossible to tell traffic lights apart, it's more like a sepia filter on colors that have a red or green component. Which is basically all of them, to varying extents. For me, it can be hard to tell purples and blues apart if they are close in shade and there is little context. The same for greens/browns/dark reds.
The most prevalent problem I have is trying to distinguish bright yellow from bright green. This comes up a lot! Many many things use 00FF00 or something close to it as the default "plain green", which is bright pure green according to RGB. To me, it's almost impossible to tell apart from FFFF00, "plain bright yellow" according to RGB. So the minimap thing is pretty awful in team games quite often.
Obviously this is not the most debilitating of vision problems but it can be quite annoying at times. I don't really even think about it, but I am always thankful when designers choose to use medium green as "plain green" because I can tell it apart from yellow, and when important colorcoded features have both hue and value contrast which is a huge clue that helps differentiate otherwise hard-to-tell-apart colors.
And for the record, fuck red nuke dots on green/brown maps. XD
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EPT
