Comments on: Color Blind Gamers

By: deadlytoque

deadlytoque — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:14:03 +0000

I had -exactly- that problem with Alpha Centauri. I am mildly nonspecific-colourblind due to MS, and so certain dark colours (reds, greens, purples, and browns, mostly) blend together into a muddy grey-brown.

That said, it hasn’t impacted me much at the gaming table, since I can differentiate bright colours.

That said, there are still major problems in colour-usage in games. In my copy of Axis & Allies, for example, it’s almost impossible to tell which units are British and which are Japanese except by shape, since one is a yellowish-brown and the other a brownish-yellow.

By: J

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:50:30 +0000

In response to p, the only time that I have ever seen explicit colorblind support was in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, there was a patch released to make the life giving, fertile green terrain easier to differentiate from the deadly, alien fungus infested red terrain. Classy move, and I really respect the move to correct a game breaking problem for a lot of players.

By: p

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:39:18 +0000

Being moderately red/green colorblind myself I can only say “YAY!” that someone is mentioning this. All the people I game with regularly know that both me and my brother have this condition so they compensate and help point things out. It has caused an issue a time or two “No, you can’t attack with them, those are MY units.” but usually ok.

I wish people who made computer games thought of this as well, since it is much tougher to compensate. Some otherwise very entertaining games are unplayable for me as I literally cannot tell the difference between certain colors.

By: G

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:38:39 +0000

Just wanted to say that.. yeah. My DM is (partially) colorblind and there are times, especially when we play some board games, when his inability to differentiate between certain colors is a massive hindrance.

He either memorizes two sets of the pieces (i.e. the ones he can’t tell apart) or he has to continually ask people which pieces are which (and gives away what his plan is).

By: scholz

scholz — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:45:59 +0000

I ran an online game of Diplomacy back in the 90s using beautiful color maps that I updated after every turn. Some of the players were known to me, others were from different parts of the world. One of my allies, Italy(I was Turkey), was prone to making all sort of mistakes, miswriting his orders etc..For a while I thought it was some sort of ploy (like a poker player pretending to have a ‘show’ only to fool others) to explain his playing on two sides. But, these errors never really seemed to help him, so if it wasa ploy, it was a pretty weak one. I was almost ready to just back stab him and control those territories myself when he sent me an email (after I complained again). He explained that he was totally blind, and that a friend described the board to him, and he read the various orders that I sent by email using a braile reader.
I was damn impressed. He stayed my ally and we faught to the inevitable stand still.