OK, Im watching a show on SF channel, John Doe. He made teh comment that hs sees in black and white.
I can deal with that …
But it got me to wondering - can someone who is colorblind in one the 3 [?] versions at their most severe play a video game like EVE online or World of Warcraft?
From The Island of the Colorblind, Dr. Sacks’s subjects, with the total non-color vision, report having severe problems with brightness. I doubt they could handle looking at a computer monitor for long without it being set to very dark, at which point the contrast would be difficult to get around. They also all complained of having fuzzy vision as well, which would probably again make computer gaming difficult, probably to the point of illegibility of the UI and all.
I was definitely wondering about that, EVE Online is all very sepia toned in the standard UI …
People who have achromotopsia - that is, “only shades of gray” colorblind - will probably have problems with computer screens due to brightness and “fuzzy” vision rather than color.
People with other varieties of colorblindness probably wouldn’t have that much problem. I play WoW with deuteranamalous trichromacy with no problem at all. I’ve played with others who mentioned being colorblind but again, it doesn’t seem to be a problem with playing WoW.
I don’t know what you call it, but I have a friend who has a lot of trouble with some colors (can’t distinguish green from red, for instance) and he plays games all the time. sometimes he gets confused (pick out a trail against the gras or something), but for the most part he can see everything well enough. For a game like Gears of War he has no problems whatsoever
Green and red? Friendly fire issues much?
oddly no, I guess he’s just trained himself to be super good at distinguishing features on uniforms and such. I dunno how he does it, it’s honestly not something I can readily wrap my mind around (probably because I can distinguish colors just fine for the most part) but he does it. Maybe he just plays on servers where friendly fire is turned off, I dunno 
It is hard to wrap your mind it when you have problems seeing colors. It looks OK to me but others tell me I am getting it wrong. So I learn to adapt.
My SO is red/green color blind, and a friend is red/green and blue/yellow color blind.
Both of them play computer games including WoW.
There are some issues. EQ’s system of color coding a target’s level, rather then showing a number, could be a problem. They actually had to read the text, not just glance at the color.
Spell/ability gem colors are a problem. Being told that it’s a green one just doesn’t work.
At least in real life, my SO is much better then I am at picking out things like deer in a field or a mouse on the ground. We’ve figured out that he watches much more for patterns and movement, rather then looking for the color. Since so many animals are camouflaged to blend into their common settings, being trained to look for color is actually a disadvantage.
Very often, the “green” in a green-versus-red idiom has enough blue in it that folks with red-green colorblindness can tell the difference. I believe the incidence of red-green colorblindness is about 10% in the male population, so with a decent sized QA pool those sorts of issues are recognized and fixed. For console games, game makers are usually contractually required to fix those sorts of issues.
Also, in people with “red/green” color problems it’s not unusual for them to see red perfectly well, it’s the green they don’t see well and which may, to the person in question, appear blue, yellow, or gray rather than what normal folks would call green. So frequently they can still distinguish green from red
I also add that that doesn’t apply to everyone colorblind, just a subset of them.
Not computer games, but I once met a colorblind (red/green) guy at a board game night who had to ask often about the color of game pieces, because it was a game that had more colors than the usual yellow-red-blue etc. The purple gave him fits, AIRC. Most board games he said he didn’t have much trouble with, because he’s accustomed to looking for the little perceptual differences between the colors. (My dad has bought many a purple hat he thought was blue, though - I assume I’m a carrier.)
Remember that red/green color blindness is caused by a red cone deficiency, not an absence. I am mildly red/green colorblind, but the effect is only pronounced when there is not enough red, e.g. low ambient light, small object, low colour saturation. For example I’m cool with purple in general, but perceive bluish-purple as blue. Similar deal with orange. Traffic lights present no problem, but I couldn’t tell you the color of the polka dots on summer dress.
As far as games are concerned, I’ve never had a problem. Of course, my condidtion is not severe. My grandfather couldn’t make out red flowers on a tree. Mind you, when he was still with us he didn’t have much cause to play World of Warcraft
Dad doesn’t like those horizontal traffic lights - he can’t tell the red from the green, which isn’t usually a problem because of position, but sometimes you get colored arrows and he can’t tell the difference.
I’m the same as this. The only time I’ve ever had problems is with one level on Doom years ago. I couldn’t make out my character against the background.
Being colour blind is hard to explain. People assume you see in black and white or can’t see a particular colour at all. It’s not like that, it comes in levels.
Trick for those who want to get an idea what color blindness is like:
Get colored glasses on. Say, yellow. Then look at things in the color range of the glasses you’re wearing. You can tell what items are darker than which ones, but distinguishing between “peach” and “apricot” becomes fuggedaboudit.
(I had serious problems with some lab test because my glasses were the kind that get darker with more light: since they were always at least a bit yellow, I didn’t see the subtle color changes between “brightly yellow pee” and “pee produced by a baby with slightly high ketones” we had to look for in inorganic chemistry lab - no, those aren’t the colors official names…)
Are there any videos or simple 3D games that demonstrate what the world would look like to a colorblind person?
I can attest to this – I’ve a friend who collects boardgames, and playing some of them is torture. The problem comes when they use colors that are too close in hue and intensity. Color-coding in dark yellow, brown, and dark green can all end up looking “brown” (or whatever). But if the color-coding is dark yellow, light brown, bright green they are easily distinguished.
At work, the computer control systems code pumps and other equipment “green” if running, “red” if stopped. But because the shades used are far enough apart, I can tell the difference. For worse cases, there is a toggle that switches them to blue and white, IIRC.
10% sounds like alot, and red and green are important colors to know when driving. How do they tell if the stoplight says to stop or go?
To me the green on a traffic light tends to look white, so there’s little problem distinguishing between red and green. Yellow’s a bit more difficult to tell apart from the red, but that tends to be a problem only when I’m far enough way from the light that I can’t tell the light position. (It’s a bigger issue when the light is an arrow that doesn’t change position but does change colors.)
There are some–thankfully, few–lights out there were the type of glass they use makes all the colors look similar to me. Usually you can differentiate by light position; the only time it caused problems for me was when I was traveling through Nebraska City and accidentally ran a few horizontal lights–which I hadn’t seen before then.