I’m pretty bad at Starcraft 2, and there are plenty of reasons why – I watch pro replays more than I play myself, I’m 41 and so my reflexes aren’t as good as a lot of my 18-year-old opponents, I’m not a terrific multitasker by nature, and I play mostly for fun not for blood – but, being color-blind definitely doesn’t make things any easier! Color provides important information to players during the game, and over the months I’ve slowly made a list of Blizzard’s more frustrating color-design choices. I’m finally getting around to sharing my list…

First, I should say that I’m not as color-blind as some folks who can only see in black and white. To me, red, green and brown are easily confused; the problem is worse if the colors to be distinguished are in small patches and/or if they are of similar hue. I have some form of “deuteranopia”, according to this cool test from Wikipedia. The classic example I give people is of red berries on tree: the little berries will easily get lost in all the green leaves, and I’ll never notice them until I’m quite close to the tree.

What’s more, the colors that are bad for me – red/green/brown – are easy to distinguish for people with a blue/yellow impairment. Good design will be quickly “readable” by as many people as possible, and with 8-10% of males affected by some kind of color-blindness, it might be worthwhile for Blizzard to take a look at this issue.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some Starcraft 2 units and buildings!

Here we have two images of a Nexus with different team colors:

Can you tell which team is which? No, it’s not the pale greenish-blue gemstones; they pulse and glow the same no matter which team you’re on. You’re supposed to look at color of the symbol on the side, and the little scallops on four of the corners of the building.

These tiny patches of color are the common way Blizzard identifies the team for most SC2 units and buildings. They want each race to have an overall “look” – yellow/silver metal for Protoss, silver/grey metal for Terran and reddish/purple (?!) for Zerg. Unfortunately, this leaves color-blind folks like me squinting for hints about which team is which, like looking for those little berries on a tree.

Now let’s take a look at some unit colors. Here’s the “green” team:

And here’s “pink”:

In these two images there’s an allied unit in the mix… good luck finding him!

Protoss units and buildings are the ones I have the hardest time differentiating, but other races are bad, too. Even the siege tanks, which have pretty big patches of color on their sides, are tough to distinguish because the colors Blizzard uses aren’t very saturated:

This is the first in a series of posts. You can find the others by clicking the DaltonistsUnite tag, or click here for Part 2.