Colorblind gaming or: Table Tennis is impossibly hard!

95 Comments by Conrad Quilty-Harper Jul 30th 2006 1:00PM
Filed under: Culture, Features, Business

Around one in ten males and one in two hundred females are unable to discern the difference between some or all colors that other people can distinguish. Like most other people with the disability, I've been colorblind (or, to use the politically correct term, have had color sight deficiency) since birth. I find it hard, and sometimes impossible, to tell the difference between shades of red, green and brown, blue and purple and oranges and yellows. As my optician told me when I was young, this disability means that I can't work in a paint factory or be a pilot. What he didn't tell me was that I'd have trouble playing friggin' computer games!

As you probably know, the Xbox 360 features several colored buttons. Usually I can tell the difference between these buttons (the problem isn't so bad that I can't tell the difference between the equivalent of red and green at traffic lights). However, there's one game that has caused a problem: Rockstar's Table Tennis. A fundamental part of the gameplay is being able to respond to the opposing player's spin on the ball. This is represented by one of the colors which are also found on the gamepad. Blue for left spin, red for right spin, green for forward spin and yellow for back spin. Unfortunately, I can barely tell the difference between the red, green and yellow on a standard definition display. On a high definition screen the green and yellow are still nearly identical to my eyes.

This isn't usually much of a problem during normal play (besides, I can always just press the green button), but on the training levels where you are taught how to spin the ball, I found the task physically impossible. I literally had to guess which spin the computer was giving the ball! Table Tennis has the hardest training level of any game, at least for me. Since completing the training levels is an Xbox 360 achievement, it's also possibly the hardest achievement there is. It took me around 3-4 hours and dozens of reattempts to get the 5 points given to you after you complete training.

Color blindness certainly isn't the only or the most problematic disability preventing people from getting enjoyment out of games, although it is possibly the most widespread. Designers of print, web and image media already take color blindness into account, but I've never read or seen the issue being discussed in the context of games. Some questions for you:

Do you have a disability? How has your disability affected your ability to play games?
If you're a game developer, or involved in the development of games, have you ever considered disabilities like color sight deficiency when designing a game?

(Page 1) Reader Comments

icemorebutts: Jul 30th 2006; 1:09PM

My eyesight is bad with glasses and I don't have a 5.1 setup so reading subtitles is somtimes difficult. I can live with it.

MetaLRasaM: Jul 30th 2006; 1:10PM

I totaly agree, after the first couple of levels this game just becomes impossible!!

epobirs: Jul 30th 2006; 1:12PM

It's somewhat surprising that this is the first time you've run into a problem. I had a classmate in an electronics course some years ago whose disability came up when trying to ID resistor values. The computer practice app was of course no help and he mentioned that a lot of games had been unplayable to him due to a lack of contrast from his perspective.

The ASCII RPG controller was a pre-analog PS1 controller that could be used in one hand. I found it handy to be able to hold a book or magazine while leveling up but I suspect others may have found it helpful due to a condition that kept their hand constantly involved with their genitals.

N-ZERO: Jul 30th 2006; 1:19PM

I have a question Conrad. Can you see colors like you know when you walk outside? Like the color of a tree or a car? What I am trying to say is can you mostly see all the colors when you walk outside with problem with some colors? Or can you see no colors outside and maybe a couple of colors you can see? I just wanted to know. Sucks pretty ad tht you can't see all colors. Well the good thing at least is you can see and were not born blind huh.

Jed: Jul 30th 2006; 1:23PM

I have basically no depth perception, I have both eyes but my left eye has limited movement so I can't cross both eyes, this is actually why I became a gamer because I had a very hard time playing sports properly.
I just wonder if there will be a problem when I try and play games on the wii, I really don't know but I just wonder if I would have as much trouble swinging the wiimote on wii sports.

Nineset: Jul 30th 2006; 1:28PM

A friend of mine had trouble with BF2: Special Forces on night maps because of the green night vision. I always thought that they should build an option to have it a different color..yellow or blue or a nice grey scale or just a light amplification instead.

Dt7: Jul 30th 2006; 1:30PM

I'm colourblind, and there's only a few things on the 360 I have problems with. Firstly are the bombs on Hexic. I have the symbols on the normal pieces which helps a lot, but when it comes to bombs its usually a 50/50 guessing game.

Secondly on Oblivion, I find it impossible to tell between good adjustments to skills (green text) and bad adjustments to skills (red text). A little arrow would have been nice.

I think more developers should add features like those in Hexic, and also like in Perfect Dark Zero, where you can change the text colour of enemies and allies to something more distinguishable.

And I was going to buy Table Tennis, but if spin really is important (which I'll assume it is) I might as well not bother and just keep playing the Demo with my (also colourblind) brother :)

Philip Isles: Jul 30th 2006; 1:30PM

I had the same problem during the training session--press both buttons at the same time. It works.

Ethan: Jul 30th 2006; 1:31PM

N-Zero, It is not complete blindness to all colors, like dogs, who can only see in black and white. Color blindness in humans, is just when people have trouble distinguishing different colors apart from each other.
Fro example, if a person could not see the 45 on the ping pong ball in the picture, then they would be considered color blind, and would only see the green or yellow part of the ball.

DidYouLoseASock: Jul 30th 2006; 1:47PM

I’m dyslexic and ironically my favorite video games are RPGs, the video games with the most written words.

Scott: Jul 30th 2006; 1:47PM

I have the same problem being color deficient. I haven't played Table Tennis, but another game that was tough for me was Dark Cloud 2 (just at one boss). At one point you fight a Rainbow Butterfly and it breaks into 7 different smaller butterflies of various colors and you must hit them in a certain order. The last three are blue, indigo and violet and all three looked the same to me, so I must have died at this boss about 10 times until I got a friend to tell me which color each was.

Jake: Jul 30th 2006; 1:51PM

Thank God there are more... I always get frustrated with my colorblindness when playing video games. The only game I've played (I'm sure there are more out there somewhere)that addresses the issue is Civ3. It has a "Colorblind Help" option where instead of just saying the name of the country about the character, it also said what color it was as well. It was a big issue when I first started playing Starcraft. When placing a building the tiles on the ground would be red if you couldn't place the building there, and green if you could. I couldn't tell the difference between the two. It took me a little longer than it should have to pick up the game. Also, Bubble Breaker on my Cingular 8125 is an absolute bitch to play when you're colorblind. The green and yellow balls look the same!!!

robo: Jul 30th 2006; 1:51PM

I experience the same problems as you! I can -see- colors, and I know they are different, but if you put them side by side, I have a really hard time telling them apart.

The worst part about it was art class in elementary school. :(

Nothing like painting a tomatoe in brown or oceans in purple and getting laughed at by everyone =P

luckily I don't have a problem with yellow/orange but yellow/green can sometimes be tricky for me.

Stenz: Jul 30th 2006; 1:51PM

I'm colorblind, and some of the worst issues I've had with it are when it comes to teams in multiplayer games. Every once in a while I have a problem with team colors in Halo 2. Whats worse is Perfect Dark Zero. If I remember correctly, Perfect Dark Zero uses a green team and a red team color setup. When I tried playing online I often found myself shooting people on my own team; it's probably why I don't like that game so much. I can't play the "wanted" minigame on New Super Mario Bros either.

Tufty McTavish: Jul 30th 2006; 1:56PM

I suffer this exact same problem, and had exactly the same issue with the TT training mission. In the end I had to learn how to recognise the spin on the ball, not from the coloured arrow symbols, but from the reaction of the ball. I recall that the first 4 balls or so always came out in the same order, so it was just a matter of getting the final 6 in the right order. I could always recognise the blue so that helped too, but the others I learned to recognise and eventually completed the training mission thing in good order.

I also cannot play Hexic for the same reasons mentioned above. Without the extra symbols added some of the colours are utterly indistinguishable for me. A friend played it for a bit, but beyond that I haven't touched it at all.

It's really annoying having people ask "What's this colour?" "What's that colour?" "You eejit, what do you mean yellow? It's GREEN!"

Conrad Quilty-Harper: Jul 30th 2006; 1:56PM

Yeah, Ethan's dead on about the condition. Read the wikipedia entry for more. I'm one of the people that can't see the 45 on the ping pong ball.

I've encountered the problem before, this is just the only time it's physically prevented me from completing a level. I've had problems with color in games before, just not this pronounced. The red/green teamplay things aren't usually that big an issue for me - they're usually very distinct reds and greens, but sometimes I do have difficulty here.

dongle: Jul 30th 2006; 1:57PM

I'm partly colorblind, and the worst game for me is Super Puzzle Fighter. The yellows and greens are identical to me. All my friends wondered why I was so bad at the game until I told them about my (admittedly minor) disability.

That bit-generations Coloris game is also very hard/impossible for me.

MetallicDragon: Jul 30th 2006; 2:04PM

I didn't realize there was a 45 on the ping-pong ball in the picture until someone mentioned it 0_o. I know I'm colorblind, but it never effects me except when I'm doing colorblindness tests.

racco: Jul 30th 2006; 2:05PM

Felonius_Dan: Jul 30th 2006; 2:15PM

E3 IS CANCELED NEXT YEAR?!

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3538&Itemid=2

J.Goodwin: Jul 30th 2006; 2:15PM

On a high def screen, you should be able to easily see the yin/yang effect that tells you what the spin is though. It's different for each color, so even the colorblind should have no problem.

Jay: Jul 30th 2006; 2:17PM

Congratulations on this great article.

I'm not colour blind, at least that's what numerous tests said. Though my left and right eyes do have an extremely slight differences, looking just through my left eye pure white has a slight blue tint and the right eye is slightly red. but it really is minute and doesn't affect me, though I do have extremely good hand/eye co-ordination through it, and I do suffer powerful migraines usually triggered by bright lights. Probably down to my astigmatism? Dunno, I'm no optician!

ETW: Jul 30th 2006; 2:20PM

I am a developer and a person that suffers from color deficiency, and it's something I always take into account. Unfortunately that's not always the case for my teams. I find myself constantly checking hex values on sprites and struggling to get them redone. You either catch the problem early enough and design around it, or you catch it too late in the dev cycle or not at all. There's no standard check for this stuff in a development cycle and there sure has hell ought to be.

Strangely enough, Nintendo took color deficiency into account when designing the Gamecube (it's explicitly stated in the documentation with dev boxes). That's why each face button has a coordinating shape as well as a color. When you see a big round button on screen, you know it's the A button, and when you see a horizontal kidney-shaped button you know to press X. I thought that was a very elegant solution.

On a personal note, whoever decided that green should be the standard crosshair color should be punched in the neck.

Clay: Jul 30th 2006; 2:21PM

I'm 100% normal when it comes to game playing.

But table tennis is still impossibly hard! I'm so incredibly stuck in the game that I'll probably never play it again.

Henk Boom: Jul 30th 2006; 2:21PM

I seem to remember that in Starcraft: Brood Wars they changed one of the team colours from teal to dark green; I'd heard that was for people who were colourblind. Reading this, though, I'm not sure how much that would have helped.

Tim: Jul 30th 2006; 2:35PM

I am slightly colorblind as well and I was glad to see this article and know I'm not the only one who had htis problem. My slight colorblindness rarely effects my passion for gaming, but tabletennis I cannot tell the difference between the yellow and green at all. In fact that seems to be the only problem I've come across in games relating to color. Puzzle Fighter and Hetix I've had slight problems with as well.

Yuki~Summer Ver.~: Jul 30th 2006; 2:44PM

I'm deaf in my left ear since birth, but it hasn't really affected my gameplay much. About the most it does is make wearing headphones pretty pointless. If a sound is coming through only the left channel, I probably won't hear it, though I can sometimes feel the vibration, so I know there is some sort of sound there. It can make it difficult to pinpoint the source of a sound.

bazald: Jul 30th 2006; 2:49PM

Yeah, some games are worse than others. Really, all games should have options for distinguishing screen elements besides color. In Heroes of Might and Magic V, I can hardly distinguish anything from terrain at all. It is the worst offender I've come across. A simple "hit tab to highlight everything but terrain" option would have been very useful.

I'm also in a game developement group at my university, and I've had a few discussions with them about the matter. At least two games members released in the past year were essentially unplayable. It is difficult to convince game developers to consider the matter seriously at times.

On the other side, however, how far do game developers have to go for people with disabilities? Should there be blind options for all games? I can imagine game devs having a fit.

Zell: Jul 30th 2006; 2:50PM

So interesting. These are things many of us don't even think about, evident in the games pointed out.

benjamin: Jul 30th 2006; 2:56PM

I have a different disability. It happened about 3 years ago. I'm not sure exactly what happened but all I can remember is that I was standing in a church, some guy asked me a question... something like "do you take this woman" or something then ever since I haven't been able to play any videogame at all. I don't quite understand it... every time I try to turn on one of my systems something physically impedes me from playing!

dsub: Jul 30th 2006; 3:17PM

my little brother can beat me at DOA4 or Halo and he's only got one hand. While I can understand that color blindness can effect a game like this especially...you can still kick someone's ass.

Manuel Labour: Jul 30th 2006; 3:24PM

That was an excellent article. I've had vision problems since I was about 4 and have had to wear really thick glasses ever since. With the glasses I was okay, but I couldn't wear contacts because of a problem with my eye lids. A few weeks ago I finally hit 21, and I went ahead and had my vision laser corrected. Vision was blurry for a day or so, but after 3 or so days my vision was better than 20/20. Clearly a medical mircale if you ask me. Who knows, maybe someday down the line there will be a correction for colorblindness.

One of my friends works as a lighting programmer and designer for concerts, conventions, and that sort of thing. Sure enough, he's colorblind. But he's also sucessful and has been written up in trade magazines on several ocassions.

Still, there should be an option in games for people with that vision disability. It's not fair to get 'pwned' for that reason.

guitrasher: Jul 30th 2006; 3:30PM

I totally fell this guys pain. I have red/green color blindness (the most common). The irony is that I'm getting a BFA in art.(i've heard of blind graphic designers, so I don't feel bad :P)
When I was playing the final boss in metriod prime, I had to have my brother next to me dictating the color of the blasts that the metriod prime was throwing out. Without his help I was getting screwed. As far as that experinece I've never had problems with games.

Matt: Jul 30th 2006; 3:33PM

[quote]I have a question Conrad. Can you see colors like you know when you walk outside? Like the color of a tree or a car? What I am trying to say is can you mostly see all the colors when you walk outside with problem with some colors? Or can you see no colors outside and maybe a couple of colors you can see? I just wanted to know. Sucks pretty ad tht you can't see all colors. Well the good thing at least is you can see and were not born blind huh.[/quote] next person that says something like that is gonna get whacked. COLOUR BLINDNESS DOES NOT MEAN YOU DONT SEE THINGS, JUST THAT ITS HARDER TO DISTINGUISH THEM.

im colour blind, have been all my life. i can see everything like everyone else. grass is green, same for everyone else. i dont see things differently.

you just cant distinguish two colours. put a red and a brown together, and my eyes cant disinguish them. but put a brown in front of me, and its brown.same goes for red. i dont not see a colour, i just dont know what it is. its still red/blue/green.

adebacker: Jul 30th 2006; 3:34PM

I am going to be a game developer (right now I'm attending Full Sail) I will try to keep this in mind if/when I get into the industry. I didn't realize that this was a problem for a lot of people.

Jonathan Harford: Jul 30th 2006; 3:45PM

Have you tried covering one eye with a red filter? I've heard that can work, and I'd be interested to hear the results.

Ryan: Jul 30th 2006; 3:53PM

Great to see someone actually bring this up in a public forum -- I'm red/green colorblind too. Like you, mine isn't so bad that I can't distinguish colors on the stoplight, but bad enough that a game like Bust-A-Move becomes virtually impossible. I always appreciate it when games or apps give you an option to replace color-based signifiers with symbol-based signifiers. Doesn't seem like it would be that hard of an option to add.

guitrasher: Jul 30th 2006; 4:11PM

I actully have glasses with red tinted lens that my mother got me to help me out with some of color intense classes. They work alright, minus the fact that I look like Cyclops and the trade off of being able to pick out proper browns, but seeing everthing with a reddish tint. It's like seeing the world through the terminators eyes.

SymetriX: Jul 30th 2006; 4:19PM

Is there really a 45 on the ball or is that just a joke? If so then I must be worse than I thought!

I can say though that I also have to enable symbols in Hexic HD to tell certain colors apart. And NO, its not like a dog's vision; why do people assume that? It's just tough telling close shades like blues/purples or yellows/greens.

Jason Aldous: Jul 30th 2006; 4:19PM

Sorry, I couldn't be arsed reading about how many other people are colourblind. So I didn't see if there was any potential fix posted already. But I might have one.

Sometimes when telling the difference between colours I noticed that what can make a difference is the amount of reference colour. E.g. I could clearly tell the difference between red and green spots when there was a large strip of red running across the top of the screen. It wasn't a conscious process, I didn't need to look at the red and compare to the spots. So perhaps you could try sticking a piece of coloured card of either red or green to the side of the T.V. and your colour perception might improve.

Please, if you do try this, let me know how it goes via email or LiveJournal.

William Mendoza: Jul 30th 2006; 4:22PM

Being color blind and playing games can be extremely frustrating sometimes. Puzzle Bobble, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Table Tennis are just a few of the games I've had trouble with. It's interesting to read about other people's experience with the condition, unlike you I can distinguish Red and Green perfectly, but green and yellow is a different story. I think game developers should take this into account when they develop games with color coded gameplay elements; offering the ability to hue shit colors seems like a easy and cheap solution to the problem.

Jason: Jul 30th 2006; 4:22PM

It's funny how little things like the way you see colors can affect the way you game.

Turns out that Guitar Hero favors the colorblind - revel in your advantage!

http://www.flickergaming.net/index.php/2006/06/13/guitar-hero-favors-the-colorblind/

Branewalker: Jul 30th 2006; 4:45PM

Yeah, we're culturally trained to understand that Green is affirmative and red is negative, but the problem is that it's THE most common colorblindness. 'twould be much better to use blue/affirmative and red/negative in games. Make it standard, devs! And, don't forget subtitles and other sound indicators for the deaf. Splinter Cell was good about the sound indicators in multiplayer (at least for the Mercs).

Now, I have a friend who has only one hand, and fortunately for him he's got his right hand s he can play games (he uses the end of his arm for the control stick) And, in Halo, he just taps the L trigger on his knee to throw 'nades. But, he had a heckuva time with Naruto 2 on Gamecube because he couldn't sidestep in both directions. So, I modified a controller and put an L button under the C-stick (that is, on the bottom of the controller, such that he could hit it with his ring finger comfortably). It worked perfectly!

--Branewalker

Matt: Jul 30th 2006; 5:01PM

colour blindness isnt too bad, cept for me i find skittles a pain (cos i cant distinguish the strawberries from the blackcurrant ones in low light), and i find that the traffic lights arent red, orange/amber, green, its red ,orange, white for me. :P and hexic is a nightmare, but thanks to whoever pointed that there is a symbol mode, i never noticed.

only one other game i know of takes colourblindness into account, and thats Battlefield 2, which makes the colours different, so its easier to see what team someone is on,but it doesnt really make much difference for me. i still kill my team mates :P

BIGmog: Jul 30th 2006; 5:24PM

I'm also partially colorblind. My suggestion would be for game developers to test their games on B&W TV's to make sure they're playable.

Funny story. I was playing Earthbound when my friend came over and asked me the water was all purple. It turns out my TV wasn't calibrated correctly so all the colors were off. When he asked me how I didn't notice all the funky colors I just said, "It's Earthbound!"

Pixelantes Anonymous: Jul 30th 2006; 6:13PM

I'm not color blind, but I'm still having problems knowing which spin the opponent is smacking the ball with in Table Tennis. It's really hard sometimes to figure it out.

The color indicators are so small that I can't really see it especially when in the middle of a really tight match. And I have a 60" TV, too. Not HDTV though.

I think it's just bad design from Rockstar (and about the only thing that does suck about the game).

Geist: Jul 30th 2006; 6:55PM

This might sound terribly insensitive, but the entire time I read this article all I could think was "Oh noes, there goes the promising future in a paint factory."

I guess developers and non-color-blind gamers don't necessarily think about how important a role colors play in games, and not just for the graphics and stuff, but for gameplay.

Jason: Jul 30th 2006; 6:57PM

OH...MY...GOD...

Thank you. A post for those that are a little on the downside. I too am color-blind and find it INCREDIBLY difficult to get past the training on Rockstar's Ping Pong game. I feel the pain we have all suffered and hope that future titles will solve this problem... left right up down? That always worked for me...

Devwar: Jul 30th 2006; 7:11PM

I used to work with someone who was color-blind, he couldn't distinguish red from other colors, so our coworkers used to write memos, and put little notes on them in red ink. Was a big joke because they could say some pretty stupid things and he wouldn't be able to read them.

Kendrick: Jul 30th 2006; 7:21PM

It's worth noting that colorblindness is not the only disability that gets in the way of gaming. Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo has a specific puzzle that depends on the ability to distinguish musical notes. Most gamers can get past it on the second or third try, but those who are tone deaf (or completely deaf) are left out in the cold. You've also got people with extreme motion sickness you can't play FPS shooters or other first-person perspective games, and certain forms of epilepsy that keep one from being able to view rapidly changing brightness levels like the curb markers in Pole Position. Less reported but no less common is old fashioned illiteracy, which makes RPG games and anything with subtitles inaccessible to people with a limited ability to read.

While it's human to be sympathetic, the truth of the matter is that not every game can be accessible to every human being. As long as the production of games is driven by sales (as opposed to being considered a pure art form) then it'll be necessary for developers to shoot for the largest possible market. We're a few decades away from the cybernetic implant that will truly level the playing field and make successful gaming solely dependent on your talent.

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