Balancing Video Games
In competitive video games, balance and fairness is a very important topic which gets brought up a lot. In games like League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, and Halo, patches/updates are released every couple of days or weeks. In these patches, changes are made to playable characters to try to make sure one character does not have an unfair advantage over another. For example, one character should not have an ability (which can be seen as a strategy) that does too much damage to the enemy or an ability that automatically wins the fight just because it was used. The balancing of a game involves a lot of game theory in that for every strategy, there should be a reactive strategy that can be used to beat it. There should not be a dominant strategy that beats everything. There should be counterplay for every ability an enemy uses, so a player’s skills (like quick reaction time) actually play a part in the game.
However, there is a strategy that influences the outcomes of these games before they even start: color strategy. The video talks about the study of 1347 matches of the game, Unreal Tournament 2004, where both teams consisted of equally skilled players. The study showed that red team won over blue team 55 percent of the time. That might not sound like a big difference, but with competitive integrity as a crucial part to these games that statistic should really be 50/50. In another study shown in the video, red team was seen to have a higher win rate in Halo. This makes choosing to be on the red team look like a dominant strategy, but in a study of the game League of Legends shown in the article and video, blue team won over the red team 56 percent of time. That was a very interesting statistic to see after just learning red had a higher win rate in two games.
It turns out that you should choose what color team you are based on what game you are playing. The color red makes you subconsciously more aggressive and makes you feel more powerful and alert, so choosing red is a dominant strategy when you play first person shooter games. The color blue makes you subconsciously more relaxed and it allows you to think long term. That is why it is a dominant strategy to choose to be on the blue team when you are playing a multiplayer online battle arena game. In cases where two teams cannot choose the same color, the teams are decided randomly. Based on luck, players are assigned to a color giving one team a dominant strategy. The characters played inside the game might not have abilities that are dominant strategies over other characters’ abilities thanks to updates/patches, but because what color team you are has an influence these games are still slightly unbalanced.
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X31K6jammH0
http://www.goldper10.com/article/1873.html