Blue Team Loses 85% of Wardogs Matches, Color Psychologist Weighs In

Ever noticed how Blue Team in Wardogs just can't seem to catch a break? You're not imagining it. According to Bulkhead, the studio behind the free-for-all sandbox military shooter, Lonestar (that's Blue Team) only wins around 15% of its games. That's right—15%. Meanwhile, Red Team (Valkyra) takes home about 36% of matches, and Green Team (Manticore) dominates with a whopping 49% win rate.

So why does Blue keep eating dirt? The meme started back in alpha. "Blue was the most popular faction pre-alpha with a lot of people liking the limited lore, the American PMC aesthetic, so a lot of newer players tended to join it in alpha," UI director Howard Philpott told IGN. There was also a genuine map advantage in early alpha builds that pushed competitive players to Red and Green, and that perception stuck.

Some players blame spawn locations. Blue Team spawns smack in the middle of the map, while Red and Green are off to the sides. That makes it feel like Blue is fighting a war on two fronts. For Season 2, the devs are moving team spawns on the Bakuriani map to fix this, and they're launching a "social experiment to help change the perception of Lonestar."

But is it really about the color blue? We asked color behavioral design expert Karen Haller, and even she was stumped. "People would normally pick Blue first because it's first," she said after seeing the team selection screen. "So you pick the first thing, don't you? You don't go across and ignore it because that's what they're doing here." Yet players do ignore it—they flock to Red and Green, leaving Blue to fill up with newcomers and, well, the kind of teammates who crash helicopters before takeoff.

Haller suggests it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. "It would be interesting to do a study or a comparison," she said. "If [Lonestar] changed to even a dark blue, or it changed to an orange, or it changed to another color, would the perception of that team change? Because it seems to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy—it's not because it's Blue that they're losing." She points out that Blue is actually associated with intellect and strategy. "Blue is the color that you play with your mind," she said. "It's intellectual, it's smart." So maybe Blue players are just playing 3D chess while everyone else runs around like headless chickens.

At the end of the day, it's not the color—it's the groupthink. The meme has become a mind virus, and decent players avoid Lonestar because they assume it's full of incompetents. But hey, if Blue players are stacking gold bars from playing the objective, who's really winning? What do you think—will you give Blue Team a chance in Season 2?