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79 Comments
- GlitchEnzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+40I am glad that somebody is finally bringing up this issue. I don't know how many games default to a Red/Green opposing teams and such, which is really dumb because Red/Green is the most common type of color deficiency.
A related complaint is with the DS Lite. The Green Power LED changes to Red when the power is low, but I can never tell the difference so I have lost progress a couple of times because of my DS shutting down. - b0wl0fud0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18@SaumZ
Here's a link to a company that manufactures sunglasses which help people who are color blind distinguish colors.
http://www.solarchromic.com/ - DharmaTurtle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17If you're color blind, you don't see in black and white.
Go to http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ to see web pages as a color blind person. - UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I never really thought about having video games be color-blind friendly. Interesting read.
- NJank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13there are different degrees of colorblindness. yours would be... ?
- SaumZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Would it be possible to mod the power light with a color filter, so that it doesn't display green/orange, so it displays as other shades?
- PaulC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I have a friend who used to always start randomly shooting his teammates in Halo. At first we thought he was just being a dick, but then we came to find out that he was just colorblind and couldn't figure out who to shoot. Halo 2 solved this problem, somewhat, by putting logos over teammates' characters, but nothing over enemies. I'm not sure if Bungie did that for color blindness reasons, but it definitely helps out.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+71 in 10 males and 1 in 200 females are color blind? That can't be right. Of all the people I've known in my life only 2 were color blind.
- somnus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7That's because it's not literally "if you have 10 male friends, 1 *will* be colour blind". Statistics are always misleading, and are generally meant to.
- chedabob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6b0wl0fud0n: damn those glasses are horrible. id rather drive through a red light than wear those.
im glad someone pointed this article out though. i was gonna post it, but somebody beat me to it. - tacom8, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7ugh, the joke kinda loose effect when it cuts off half the text.. mod these down to oblivion fellas...
/digg doesn't like underscores apparently... - Archangeleon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Color blindness is more common in men than women because it is a sex linked trait, in this case the gene for color blindness (red/green, I believe) is recessive and on the X chromosome. If you have 2 X chromosomes then you have to have the recessive gene on both chromosomes to express the trait, which is very unlikely. Males only have 1 X chromosome, so whatever genes are on it are simply expressed by default, which is why vastly more men are colorblind then women.
- cmiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The majority of people that are 'color deficient' are very mildly deficient and frequently won't even know it. There are actually a bunch of different types of colorblindness, but mild red/green is the most common.
- jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is an extremely pervasive problem in society. There are more than 15 million colorblind people in the United States alone. That's more than 10 times the number of legally blind people, 30 times the number of deaf people, and 10 times as many people are colorblind as are in wheelchairs. The blind get braille on ATMs, signs, audible traffic lights, books on tape, and Social Security benefits. Deaf people have closed captioned television, telephones that blink instead of ring, cochlear implants, etc. People confined to wheelchairs have the force of Federal law requiring ramp access to buildings, elevators and/or ramps, wide aisles on planes, and ramps on every sidewalk in America. What do colorblind people get - even though we outnumber all of those disabilities combined by a factor of 5? Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. The worst part is that accomodating colorblindness only takes a minimum of effort. It doesn't require changing your businesses buildings, putting new equipment on public streets, or any of that. It just requires that someone use their frickin' head when designing things. Do we get that? Nope.
- adamlaz2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I remember when I used to play Battlefield 1942 -- the teams were red and green. But, now with Battlefield2 the teams are red vs. blue. It makes a world of difference.
- cmiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've heard that those glasses don't really do very much to help...
I've run into this issue a few times. Some games are unplayable because the background and characters are too closely colored to see what you're doing. I've seen a few games pop up with "colorblind" or "high contrast" modes, and they're refreshing to see. I'm glad it's actually getting some notice, it was a long long time before color safe websites or even street signs became popular. - spidoman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Also a quick description of being color blind (not many people really understand how it works) Think of it this way. A normal person knows the numbers 1-10. A colorblind person knows only the odd numbers. So if someone shows you the number 4. You know it's a four. With a color blind person, they see the 4, and their brain interpets it as either a 3 or a 5.
Maybe an even better example would be, if you saw a rainbow, and squinted so it went blurry, and the colors kinda mixed, so you only saw 3 or 4 colors, instead of all 7. - ldhertert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I played halo 2 on live for months before I realized that the different teams had different colors (I'm *very* color blind). I just didn't shoot at the people with icons over their heads. Ever since then, I've noticed that I rarely look for color cues to things, I usually look first to other telling signs.
- afex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"id rather drive through a red light than wear those"
i swear, people who are colorblind are the funniest people at the world - i had one guy in my senior project in college that would always poke fun at himself, making his lab partners breadboard up things because choosing resistors was a bitch - DharmaTurtle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Uh, sorry I need to clarify a bit. There is this one form of color blindness called monochromacy where you've lost the ability to distinguish between any colors. So, that's essentially seeing in black and white. I believe its much more uncommon than being red-green or blue-yellow or the other forms of color blindness, though.
- wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Color deficiency is far more common that complete color blindness. I believe that 1 in 10 (give or take) males have some form of color blindness. Most of the time they do fine. Unless they get a challenging test for colorblindness (FALANT or the pseudoisochromatic (Ishisihara) plates, the ones that you see the numbers in center) you may never know.
Most of these people just assume that they way they see is the way everybody sees. - CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And in reality it was the teacher that was "slow" :)
- Tochi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have a friend who is colorblind and can't play certain games because he can't tell the difference between certain characters. Halo is an example he uses, there is no difference in the color of the master chief in Deathmatch to him.
- DeadWisdom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I completely agree with this statement. It's not so much to help the very small subsection of the populace that are mono-chromatically color blind (although that is a bonus), but rather that a good user-interface should have a plethora of visual cues to distinguish objects; color should be a supporting visual cue, not the only visual cue.
- ConEEE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This comments thread really impresses me - one of the most well thought out threads on Digg. I'm glad I started such an interesting discussion!
Conrad
joystiq.com - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I called MaHa just the other day to ask them what they were thinking with their battery chargers. I can understand that being colorblind limits me in some ways and that's nobody's fault, but when even the tiniest shred of thought could have avoided the problem it really irritates me. They could have the LED turn off when the charge is complete, blink, or do something. But no, they decided that 1 of 10 men using their product don't really need to know when the batteries are done charging.
- Dayz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3haha. Took 15 minutes for him to pull up his guts
- tedc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@BIGMog
I'm not sure why you're getting dugg down for this. Why not test in B&W to make sure key elements can be distinguished by shade as well as colour? There are different types of color impairment, but regardless, people with this condition develop a much higher sensitivity to shades to compensate, so it should help.
I remember taking one test in which I could clearly see a pattern in the dots the examiner (who had normal color vision) could not. That was because the test in question was all green with ever so slight variations in shade. He went on to tell me that in World War II, the military trained people like me to spot camoflauge on aerial photos, though they have more automated ways of doing this now.
One thing I find becoming an increasing nuisance of late is the red/green LEDs you see on more and more appliances. For example, I just bought a battery charger with a light that switches from red (still charging) to green (fully charged). For the life of me, I can't tell the difference. If they had just use two lights or varied the brightness between to two states by even a bit, I would have no problem. - teamparadox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This reminds me of a time when I was young (about 11) playing Skitchin for Genesis. A friend and I were playing one night and the colors on his TV were all messed up. He had a color button which would shift the colors and if you pushed it the colors were very green and if you pushed it again everything looked good.
So I would push it and then he would push it and we went back and forth for like 15 min before he yelled at me and told me he was colorblind..it was pretty damn funny looking back on it but at the time I felt like an ass****. - chedabob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2anybody know of a test that determines how colour blind you are? cos im just curious to exactly what colours i am colour blind to. i completely forgot, because i was diagnosed about 7 years ago.
- enforcerpsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am color blind (mostly, almost black and white) and as an avid gamer I can tell you it does have its problems. I am very competitive when it comes to gaming and sometimes I completely lose objects to backgrounds and other scenes. The biggest problem is games that use green and yellow as DIFFERENT indicators. Developers, if you are reading this...STOP MAKING YELLOW AND GREEN INDICATORS, us color blind people can't tell them apart!
- ajifans, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In certain situations colour blindness is an advantage.
Camouflage doesn't work very well with camouflage, and colour blind men have been used as spotters by the military.
So in games I can spot someone quicker than someone with perfect vision, I just can't decide whose side they're on
Also because of the contrast difference you get better nightvision, although this doesn't work in games. - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Choosing resistors is more than a bitch, it's impossible. It sucks having a pile of random resistors and having to meter each one until you find the one you want. The worst part is that they could just use different shades of color and it wouldn't be a problem, but apparently it's too much work to put some thought into product design.
- Zoologico, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Make it a red filter and it will only appear to turn on when the power is low.
:) - jaderobbins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2jakedoom ftl :(
- poopsacky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Years back when I was playing puzzle fighter (a street fighter puzzle game) for the first time with a friend, I did not understand why I couldn't get some boxes to link while others did.. That was when I realized that I couldn't tell the difference b/t the green and yellow boxes... I really liked that game..
- shatters, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm red/green difficient aswell. One of my teachers in kindergarten wanted to hold me back because they thought I was "slow". I even had to go to school for a full day where others (including my twin brother!) only had half-days. My brother still jokes with me for that some 25 years later.
- ToRoE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hexic (for the 360) has a setting for adding a pattern instead of just colors, so they gave it some thought.
I am shade color blind, but didn't notice much of a problem with Rockstars table Tennis. Well not due to the colors, it is a tough, but rewarding game (who would have thought.)
I do believe the 'colored' rotation indicator also spins in the direction of the spin. While not quite as obvious, it still offers a clue.
I 8 year old son gets quite a kick out of the fact I am shade color blind. Also, my Grandfather is almost completely color blind. never stopped him in anything, like becoming a full Colonel in the Air force. - tbeseda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1OMG there are others like me!
I can relate to nearly every comment about each specific game made on this article.
Pink and Purple teams are bitch playing Halo 2 online!
My recomendation would be to play games in HD, it has helped me a little bit... - SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i was playing Battlefeild 2 the other day, the game randomly turned color blind option on, which got me worried thinking my new hd tv got messed up... finally figured it out. the colors change from a blue to a light baby blue and the red to a yellow orange, im not sure but i think one time everthing was outlined with a light blue color...
anyway one of my friends long time ago i didnt find out he was color blind till 3 years later when we were in art class and the markers didnt say the color on em, he asked for red but jokingly i passed em a brown or green i dont remember, messed his picture up but we ended the day laughing it off... - ddales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm Red/Green difficient. I personally enjoy the sports genre. With most of the games it's pretty easy to tell who's who on the screen. However, it can get pretty difficult sometimes if you're playing football or soccer where the players tend to mix chaotically on the field. The only way to get around this problem is to use a camera setting that makes the players their largest size. The problem there is you obviously lose oversight of the field because of the "closeup" effect. I don't see, no pun intended, any way for this to be allowed for by game companies unless they allow you to choose uniform colors prior to starting a game.
- scottauth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I just recently bought Table Tennis and had the same trouble!
I played the training level the author speaks of for about an hour until I figured out the potential patterns that would occur, by guessing which button to press. I don't like playing the game online because my opponents have that extra (and crucial) edge on me for this particular game. - romzombie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"Sadness" by Nibris for the Wii will be entirely grayscale... no issues there!
Up with monochrome! Down with color! - eradicator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can see him having trouble with Table Tennis, but I bet he's an ace at Pong...
- Zedtech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not to sound like an ass but I'm just as colorblind or more colorblind than the guy in the article (okay well "color deficient", not totally colorblind). Sure, it does hurt you in gaming. I'm very bad at military games where theres alot of brush/greenway and characters hiding in it (for example Online Play on Xbox Live in some of those Ghost Recon games were nearly impossible for me).
However you just kind of learn to cope. Very rarely to games totally rely on color like in this circumstance above where you need to be able to determine the color of a button and press it at a certain point. Most use letters (such as "A" "B" "X" "Y") or in the case of the playstation, symbols (Triangle/Circle/Square/X) and it makes it easy to learn/distinguish because most games tell you what button to push, not what color. In my experience playing games where I cannot distinguish the color I've learned to focus on motion and movement.
A very good example of this is Natural Selection (Third Party Half-Life Mod). Its like an Aliens Versus Marines type gameplay and on some levels I can't see the skulks (basic alien lifeform) on the ground even though some people claim they are standing there as plain as day. What makes it worse is that skulks can climb walls/stick on the roof so if they're in an area I can't distinguish very well I'm very easily ambushed. Sound and Motion play key roles in indentification, to all gamers, but to color blind gamers it seems especially important for being able to pick out enemys/movement/balls (in sports). And for those who have played NS, my colorblindness goes as far as I cannot tell the difference between a fade and a marine with a jetpack unless I'm up close to one (I shoot at both and if I see blood I assume its an enemy, if not I assume other wise) - CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have also noticed that I'm good at spotting details that elude people with normal colourvision and that my nightvision is better than most.
Are there other advantages to being colorblind ? - NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My friend cameron has a lot of trouble with metroid prime with the last part of the game.. Hell even I do and I see fine. Purple and blue metroids are hard to pick apart
- Demono, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I am red/green colorblind but my major issue is with shades of yellow and green looking identical. Most of those bubble popper type games are impossible for me if they use yellow and green balls because they look exactly alike to me.
- mrmustard1973, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here is a red/green test.
http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html
And one for young children here:
http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm#demonstration%20card - CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm also red/green colourblind ( green-weak to be exact ) like most colourblinds.
I don't have problems gaming, though I haven't tried many of the games that are mentioned as I'm a PC gamer and they are mostly console games.
Any suggestions for PC games where it might make a difference ? -
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