Thank you J-The-Meme, for allowing us to use this awesome fan art for the header image. Leave your love on his Reddit post.

As the field tests are soon coming to a close, we are left pondering the future of Pokémon GO while we wait for official launch.

One of the most interesting parts about Pokémon GO is the three team dynamic vs the two team one presented to us in Ingress. Traditionally in Ingress, if one team got lopsided in a city, it stayed lopsided and created a no win or re-balancing situation. With Pokémon GO, this may not be as big of an issue since you’ll have the possibility of two lesser teams joining forces to dethrone the dominating one. Back to the original question of this article though, which team will you choose in Pokémon GO? I have a few guesses on what factors will determine the most common choices to this question.

Factor #1: Pokémon Nostalgia

A wide majority of people joining Pokémon GO have some sort of history with Pokémon depending on when they were born. As most of us know, the three team colors are modeled after the original US release of Pokémon on the Gameboy: Red, Blue, and Yellow.

Through out the series, we’ve seen more titles touching on the Red and Blue themes, but not so much with Yellow. Even the latest core games coming out lends itself to the Red/Blue theme. I’d like to guess that a great deal of players will likely choose their team color based on the color theme of the first Pokémon game they played as a kid (or adult). While not all core games fit into the three team colors presented, a majority are covered under the Red and Blue themes. This leads me to believe that most people choosing via this method will likely be joining the Red and Blue teams, with few choosing Yellow.

Factor #2: Ingress

A fair number of Pokémon GO players will be coming from Ingress. Faction loyalty runs deep with Ingress players and could likely determine what team they choose when taking on Pokémon GO. But wait… There is no green team in Pokémon GO. This presents an interesting balance situation. While many Resistance (blue) agents will join the Blue team in Pokémon GO, this may leave the Enlightened (green) agents with a possible dilemma since there is no color team to default to. My initial guess is that most Enlightened agents will filter into the Red and Yellow teams, creating a team imbalance going out the door.

Factor #3: Colors in Market Research

Last year I published an article titled Psychology Behind The Choice, which outlines some reasons behind why an Ingress player might choose the Resistance (blue) or the Enlightened (green). One such example from the article is the color blue being the most popular color based on marketing research. The numbers vary from study to study, but widely the results are pretty similar.

[Source]

As you can clearly see in the above example, regardless of sex, blue beats out every other color by a good deal. When applying this example to Pokémon GO, if a person were to pick their team purely on favorite color, the dominate team order would be: 1st – Blue, 2nd – Red, 3rd – Yellow.

Conclusion

Be it nostalgia from Pokémon games you’ve played in the past, representing your Ingress team (ok, just Resistance folk here), or your favorite color, it’ll be interesting to see who chooses what team and what their reasoning for it is. Based on the above factors, my guess is that Blue will be a dominate team in many areas. Regardless, I look forward to seeing how this three team dynamic will shape the local and regional communities of Pokémon GO. Tell us what team you’ll be joining and why in the comments!

Update!

Team names and leaders have been revealed with the launch of Pokemon GO! More details about each team here: https://fevgames.net/pokemon-go/guide/concepts/teams/