"Game Design for Colorblind Players" Topic

I had a customer request me to make him a counter sheet for a Sci-Fi miniatures game that he plays. In a sense, I designed a counter-counter set for him. He is color blind in all color spectrums, only being able to see a hint of the Green spectrum, so no matter what colors were used on the original counter-sheet, everything looked like it was in the grey-tones, or as he puts it, "it all looks like mud". My task was to redesign the entire sheet so the markers can be seen clearly by him.

The fault with the original counter sheet was that there were a few red backgrounds that had black type across them. To colorblind people, red looks black, or dark grey, and so the black type was almost invisible on the counters. The same could be said for the green markers that had grey type.

In the end I sent him a few JPG mocks ups of the new counter sheet, making minor changes until it was good. I also reinforced the color background by placing a letter code on each counter so he could read the letter and correspond it with a color (simply put: Y= Yellow / R= Red / etc).

This week I will get high quality color laser copies made and then I will mount the printouts onto a heavy cardstock and then will cut them all out, package and ship them out. These will end up having a higher production value than the original markers, will have a protective coating applied to extend their game play life, and with each marker being 0.65 inches square, they will be slightly larger than the original marker's half inch sizing, which makes them a little more functional in the game -- a requirement my customer requested.

The final counters will still be in color, as the customer is not intending to play solitaire, so the counters will still be colorful and interesting for other, non-colorblind, players. In fact, I doubt if other players will even notice that the color sheet is colorblind friendly.

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How much of this is an issue? How many colorblind people are there who game and how many do not game because of their colorblindness? Redesigning some of the counter sheets out there is not really a hard task.

I think about this a lot, as I'm Red/Green colorblind. Depending upon the saturation, I often can't tell one from another. If a game uses blue or yellow or brown to highlight certain things, I'm fine. But if an example of play is the Red team vs. the Green team, then I'm squinting and holding it up to the light.

Luckily most layout nowadays is smart enough to use additional clues, such as one side being numbered and the other side being lettered.

Symbols and shapes might be a good solution too

Starting to have more red-green troubles (cataracts) so I'm being careful about having light/dark uniforms and different headgear. If you look at old wargame magazines, there were a lot more dark blue or red vs white or light gray armies--think the old Grant armies--before all the pictures were in color.

"Game Design for Colorblind Players"

Avoid red and green.

I've only ever met one person who was colorblind

I used to lose Sorceror (by SPI) games as I couldn't tell the purple from blue hexes (I am red/green colourblind).

Mike

I'm not colorblind, but marketing them as "colorblind friendly" would be a good selling point…

I'd think that using black and white counters with sharp contrast would be beneficial ?

Armada gives me a few issues… unless the lighting is great, those tiny red, black, and blue diamonds are pretty hard to differentiate.

Would have been better if they had made the shapes different. For instance red circles, blue triangles, and black diamonds.

I felt very smug about color coding the game detritus for various games (rosters, measuring sticks, dice, markers, etc.) to speed up play with simple visual coordination, until one day I discovered that a dismayingly high percentage of my gaming buddies suffer some form of color blindness. In the right circumstances that could mean more than half of my players!

There are several categories of color blindness, and a spectrum of perception effects, so it's not as easy as avoiding red and green. Symbols and shapes are a good alternate suggestion. I'd be very interested to hear more tried and tested methods, or even just suggestions from actual victims of colorblindness.

- Ix

Being partially colour blind and visually impaired, contrast is important – black and white being best. Simple and thick fonts help as well.

Best of all is having understanding buddies who let you take your turn over when you unknowingly do some blue-on-blue friendly fire.

Mike

Trying to play Heroclix is hard. I am red green colorblind. I think that is why I have always been attracted to games with simple colors like red, blue, and yellow. I hate games that have red vs green.

I remember a story about the Gettysburg Electric Map. When the park service decided to get rid of it, one of the contributing factors in the decision was the red-green color blindness of the then park superintendent.

"… But there's also another aspect to my opinion: I'm red-green-brown color blind…so I have a hard time distinguishing the lights…"

From Cosmic America Blog – link:
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One possible solution to your needing to remake a counter sheet may be to do as one of the combatants at Gettysburg did. The Army of the Potomac used different hat badge symbols for each different corps. Perhaps sticking to one easily recognized color but using a distinct icon to differentiate the various units/organizations.

link

Edit:
By the way… The Gettysburg Electric Map did re-open just this summer in Hanover, PA incase anyone is interested in it.

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Not sure if his color-blind type fits, but there are special glasses that may help:

Enchroma glasses. enchroma.com

The late Charlie Prosek told me once of a customer who was color blind. One day this customer brought in a group of 25 mm Zulus he had painted and asked Charlie what he thought of them. Charlie admired painting on the feathers and shield designs, but finally asked the guy "did you intend for their skin to be kelly green?"

Apparently he had inadvertently switched marked paint caps.

I have issues with some green/brown, red/brown, blue/purple, and sometimes red/green. Usually the colors are bold enough in a wargame or board game but when they try to get cute using all kinds of subtle shades on counters then I can have issues. At that point I look for national symbols and such at that point.

It has never kept me from buying or playing a game though.

For developers, there are apps out there that will temporarily tint your screen to replicate several types of color blindness. That's one way to help make sure your graphics have the right contrast.

We have a guy with really bad red/green colorblindness in our group. I once tossed him a clump of red pipe cleaner markers and they landed on the green felt table right in front of him and he absolutely could not see them without getting down to table level to see them sticking up. I didn't know he was colorblind at the time and was shocked when he stood there staring at the table like I did a magic trick.

zircher: thank you for the tip on downloading an app that simulates colorblindness. I downloaded: Color Oracle and that really helps. Its available for Linux, Mac and PC. colororacle.org

My client is super rare in that he cannot see colors in the red or blue spectrum and can barely see green.

That type of processor is good, but also be careful since printed colors are different than screen colors. Also, we tend to use a lot of physical manipulables (like the aforementioned red pipe cleaners) over which the game designer has no control.

Redundancy with design, like symbology mentioned above, is advantageous when you can.

Thanks for all the ideas. I am not colour blind but my Dad is – you never let him go clothes shopping on his own :)

High contrast is also helpful for older eyes. Can't beat black on white but then all those designers would be unemployed ….

With symbols and for example saga, my brain recognizes "some Viking rune". It's fairly hard for me to remember which one is which. So a plea for really simple shapes

John

A follow-up question for our color blind comrades: Is it too hard to tell the difference between red and blue?

"Red vs. blue" is a by now a long military tradition, with many military maps being marked this way. I frequently invoke this tradition to differentiate generic counters, dice, QRSes, etc. It's also an easy way to quickly discern horse & musket British from their opponents.

- Ix

Keep in mind 'red' and 'blue' cover a wide range of colors.

Selecting the proper shade of each can make it easier for people with mild color blindness to see the difference.

I know its a bit late now, but did you make easy to make 'fake' counters, to save all the work. By this I mean a whole load of various combos background/text. Then he could pick out the ones that worked for him and you can do the real counters in those combos.