Science Says Red Beats Blue

The war is over and a winner has been declared: Scientific research now proves that the Red Team is better than the Blue Team.

An article published in the Cyberpsychology & Behavior journal this week revealed that a scientific study of 1347 Unreal Tournament 2004 matches, a game described in an Associated Press report as mainly involving “running around and shooting,” determined that Red Team defeated Blue Team 55 percent of the time. Mihai Moldovan, a neuroscientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who worked alongside researchers at the Carol Davila University in Bucharest, Romania, said the Red Team’s advantage could be because the color red can act as a “psychological distractor” for men, possibly because they flush and turn red when they become angry.

Despite the obvious and now irrefutable unfairness of the situation, Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein expressed little sympathy for the unfortunate losers on the Blue Team. “While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years,” said Rein, who has long been rumored to drop out of games whenever he’s automatically assigned to the Blue Team. “We don’t anticipate any immediate changes to team colors.”

The results are expected to help further scientific analysis in other ongoing studies, including Triad: A History Of Red Squadron Vs. Blue Squadron, Making It Up As We Go: A Contextual Analysis of Lightsaber Colors, and If Red Is So Awesome Then What’s Up With All These Dead Star Trek Guys?