As Kotaku’s resident colour-blind gamer, I feel a duty to point out that some of my brethren have asked Infinity Ward to patch Modern Warfare 2 to remove the game’s red-green/enemy-teammate confusion.
In MW2′s multiplayer, the fastest way to differentiate friend from foe is if their name is green (teammate) or red (enemy). These colours also are used to to distinguish combatants on the game’s radar. Colour-blind gamers are asking for the ability to change friend/foe colourations so they can game without confusion.
The petition points out that Call of Duty: World at War had the option of changing enemy/friendlies from red/green to orange/blue. “The Ghost Recon games have also had a similar feature. With this being such a huge release, this option should come as standard, especially when almost 10 per cent of people are affected by colour-blindness in some form.”
I realise that when fewer than one in 10 men deal with this kind of vision (and half of one per cent of women) we’re absolutely talking about optimising for a minority. The game is built, it’s selling like nuts, updates cost money, and I’d be astonished if Infinity Ward rolled a patch for an affected population this small. And honestly, when you grow up colour-blind, you learn workarounds for the condition (on the traffic signal, top means stop, low means go.)
But, to future devs, red and green are the most commonly transposed colours in colour-blindness. Pick a different pair, and you won’t have us colour-blind tugging on your pants leg with these kinds of frivolous-sounding demands.
For those curious, in that image the colour-blind are supposed to see a number 17. Everyone else should see a number 15. I can’t see shit.
MW2 Patch for colour Blind Gamers Urged [Game Politics]
Jesse Thomson
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:28 PMAH so that explains why i keep getting minced by friendlies >_<
Dangles
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 6:12 PMAHAHA
I cant see either numbers.
valve also need to do a similar thing for Team Fortress 2.
marty
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:29 PMThe colour blind patch in L4D/2 was really useful even for non-colour blind player,s made player outlines more obvious and health stand out more.
Will sign the petition
Kyle Nash
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:29 PM“i cant see shit” haha owen youre a funny one
Darius
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:35 PMnot 43? wth?
Mark Guardiani
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:41 PMits a problem i’ve faced for many years :(
battlefield series also causes me problems. i tk a lot :P
Peter
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:01 PMIt took me a while to figure out how anyone could see 17 in that picture. The magic of the red dots! But even then, I find it very hard for my brain to remove the light green dots to see 17. Dam I really feel for you guys now. Because colour is everything in games. Although in MW2 all I see is green/brown so I just shot at the moving objects :P.
Jake
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:46 PMYou won’t have that problem versing me Owen. I use Ninja Pro :P
Nick
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:54 PMwell if you could use the developer console for the pc version you could do this.
Arthur McChesney
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 8:42 PMAre there numbers there? If you say so.
Justin Robson
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 10:12 PMFuck the colourblind!
*grumblegrumble*we need a local search before you do anything else*grumble*
Chuloopa
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:00 PMi see a 15… i guess i;m ok…
i’ve signed though. all gamers are created equal
Darius
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 4:21 PMsome just more equal than others
sdf
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:49 PMHmm I can make out the 1 just fine and about half of the 7.
10% is a fairly significant portion of a population. And these kind of problems can be fixed very easily.
Kizaru
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 12:45 AMIs this really such a big deal? In games like call of duty, it takes about 1 second FLAT to kill or be killed. Who the hell looks at the name before they shoot? takes some time before the match begins and recognise the teams, and the uniforms you’ve seen them wear and remember them.
Plus, enemy names don’t tend to show up until you get your crosshair on them, meaning you will likely tell who an enemy is without the the need for colours. Teamates will always have names on them.
Jay
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 1:30 AMIW just made MW2 very simple in a very great way. A lot of people can criticize Treyarch all they want, and COD4 is still the best i believe. But Treyarch did a lot more with World at War when compared to MW2.
Compare the budgets, the sales, the popularity, the marketing and that says alot. MW2 failed for me. I will keep it, but theres no way i’ll be thrashing it like i have COD4/World at War.
Dousatsu
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 9:34 AMI don’t look at the colours anyway, I look at whether or not a tag is there at all. If you see someone running across the map without any writing over their head…shoot them. They’re most likely an enemy.
DogMan
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 12:17 PMThey put controls for that Nomad guy in Call of Duty 4, so it seems perfectly reasonable to ask for a colour blind option. Its not like you’re demanding they change the default to brown and purple or anything.
Roland
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 1:20 PMIt mgiht be for a minority, but they’d be dogs if they didn’t do this simple thing to help those poor colourblind ppl out
Tysen Woodlock
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 7:54 PMI am also colourblind (red-green colour deficiency) and have been waiting for this patch as well.
If you check out AbleGamers website you will see that IW essentially ignored gamers far more disadvantaged than myself, including individuals who simply want a “toggle” aim option because they have lost use of their limbs, so I’m not confident that they will quickly change things to help us colourblind gamers.