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Color Blindness and Board Games
Taking that thought farther... genetically speaking, men are more likely to have some degree of color blindness than women, and even men who aren't technically color blind seem to have trouble distinguishing between red and orange for example. I don't think that it's just a vocabulary issue either... I mean I'm not talking about knowing the difference between chartreuse and yellow.
One time, a friend and I were walking to a pizza place a few blocks from his apartment, in the winter time. He was wearing this turquoise-colored ski jacket, and I made some comment about it. He looked at me blankly and said, you mean this green jacket? We had a brief disagreement about the color, and then I asked the next ten people that we passed "Is my friend's jacket green or turquoise?" All five women and three of the five men said "turquoise." The other two guys said "green."
Anyway, given that men are more likely to have some degree of color blindness, and men are also more likely to be play boardgames, are there any games that you've played where the colors of the board or the pieces have caused problems? And have you ever played any games with someone who had serious color blindness?
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- Michael Barnes
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Sixth COSMIC color? Please let it be pink...
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You mean he does not carry the colorblind microbadge!?He does pretty well with it though, and unlike a lot of afflicted geeks he doesn't make a big show of his condition.
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LvT
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- Michael Barnes
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1. The cards need text or more explicit icons
2. The game could look incredible with period photographs (think Weegee) instead of hideous cartoon artwork
I swear, every edition of the game- including the new one- repeats the exact same mistakes in layout, graphic design, and presentation. And please, for the love of god, bring back the coffin box.
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The physical difference, since it's genetic, suggests some fascinating (if you're a social scientist like me) selection processes over time. Why would women be better at color or more specifically, why would it be weeded out of the gene pool vs. men who it doesn't matter as much for? Why would they be selected for color over men, who are allowed to have more incidence of color blindness? Are men less disadvantaged by color blindness? In the same way that Africans have sickle cell more often because sickle cell hurts you but has the side effect of making you less vulnerable to malaria? The obvious point is that color is vital to social and societal activity, which traditionally women have been more associated with. They had greater need to deftly navigate human social groups. But there are a number of other possible explanations, I suppose...
And no, I've never played a game with color blind people.
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According to a quick Googling, 7%-8% of all men have red-green color blindness, so it just doesn't make sense for game designers/publishers not to accommodate this demographic. If you count "some form of color vision deficiency" it's as high as 8%-12%! (I'm too lazy to properly provide sources - I looked at several )
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Why would women be better at color or more specifically, why would it be weeded out of the gene pool vs. men who it doesn't matter as much for?
Visual optimization for gathering vs visual optimization for hunting. A gather needs to recognize the difference between the redish-blue berries which are poison, and the bluish-red berries that are good eating, and needs to be able to distinguish between the two colors at a distance so she doesn't waste time hiking to the wrong bush. The hunter needs to recognize the difference in shape and movement - is it just the wind moving the branches of a tree, or is it an animal moving in the branches.
Another interesting fact about the difference between the typical female processing of visual information vs the the male, is that men scan sequentially (for movement) to find things while woman take in the whole picture and pluck out what they are looking for. Its why men stare into the fridge until their eyelashes get frosty looking for the mayo, but a woman can just open the door and grab the mayo. The man is scanning and identifying each item individually in his search for the mayo (which isn't moving and therefore is hidden). The woman sees the entire contents of the fridge instantaneously and indentifies the mayo. Again it is optimization for hunting vs optimization for gathering.
This might have some impact on why men and women like different board games, or play games differently. They see and process the board information differently. I find that I really don't like games that require scanning and processing board information sequentially to play well, because it requires a great deal of mental discipline and effort for me to do this. Worker placement really sucks because when I see the board I just see that there is a bunch of blue guys in the upper left box, and some scattered red guys in the middle and a bunch of yellow guys on the right. This information in pretty useless. However if I'm looking at a RISK board, or even an Arkham board, I can get a bunch of useful information instantaneously with very little mental effort.
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I'll open the fridge and stare furtively for several minutes, usually because my youngest son has asked for ketchup or something. I'll eventually say, "I think we're out of ketchup." Then my wife will come over and nab it immediately from the fridge, right in front of me. It was like it wasn't there until she pointed out where it was.
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If you have any questions about legislative politics, democracy, trade or international politics let me know. HA.
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Very interesting points Ubarose. I also struggle to find things in the pantry and the kids drawers that my wife finds instantly. She just thinks I'm useless, but now I can tell her I'm just looking to club something.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more examples spring to mind. I can see this occupying my mind most of today.
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Oh man...I thought I was the only one with the mayo problem!
I'll open the fridge and stare furtively for several minutes, usually because my youngest son has asked for ketchup or something. I'll eventually say, "I think we're out of ketchup." Then my wife will come over and nab it immediately from the fridge, right in front of me. It was like it wasn't there until she pointed out where it was.
But if that ketchup so much as exhaled, you'd be on it like white on snow.
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It got ridiculous in our last game of Battlestar Galactica, which started an hour before sundown. We had a single lamp on at one end of the room, but the ambient light from the windows went away. I was sitting closest to the lamp, but even I noticed that it was getting pretty dark in the room. I asked him twice if they needed the other light on, and he and his wife were all "no, we're fine." Finally, the guy sitting next to him complained that he couldn't read his cards or the board anymore, so we finally turned the second lamp on.
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