As an avid gamer with red-green colorblindness, I’ve lost track of how often I’ve been flanked by enemies I literally could not distinguish from the background environment. My inability to spot that faint shimmer effect or properly identify the enemy’s vivid red outlines places me at a real disadvantage. And I know I’m not alone.
Color vision deficiency (CVD) impacts gameplay experiences for an estimated 8% of men and 0.5% of women globally. For CVD gamers, both casual and professional, typical game designs can pose unnecessary but often surmountable accessibility barriers.
In this guide, we’ll break down the CVD challenges faced specifically in VALORANT by one of esport’s biggest stars, Tyson “TenZ” Ngo. By analyzing his struggles, we can better recognize opportunities to support colorblind gamers not only in Riot’s tactical shooter but across the industry.
The Need for Greater Inclusiveness
Before examining TenZ’s specific difficulties distinguishing colors within VALORANT, it’s important to understand colorblindness itself. Put simply, color vision deficiency arises from our eyes’ cone photoreceptors that detect color not working properly.
There are three main cone types: red, green and blue. CVD occurs due to genetic factors that mean at least one cone type is faulty or missing entirely. This results in an inability to recognize some or all colors.
The most prevalent deficiency is anomalous trichromacy, also known as “red-green colorblindness”, impacting how reds, greens, purples and mixes of those shades appear. This is likely the form of CVD affecting TenZ based on his described symptoms.
However, the severity and specific colors impacted varies. Without proper accessibility options, CVD introduces unnecessary difficulty recognizing UI elements, textures, characters and abilities. And in hyper-competitive ecosystems like tier-one esports, even minor visual mismatches can prove costly.
How TenZ Perceives VALORANT’s Colors
As a top-ranked VALORANT professional, TenZ’s performance depends heavily on split-second ability identification. But his red-green colorblindness definitely obstructs his view of the vivid virtual world around him.
In one video, TenZ revealed just how radically CVD alters his VALORANT visuals:
- Dulled Shades: Intense reds fade to nondescript browns while dark blues meld into flat gray hues.
- Blending Crosshairs: Typical green and yellow crosshairs bleed away against the background. He opts for a cyan crosshair instead.
- Muted Model Outlines: Red character outlines that warn when enemies are close by are dull and difficult to notice compared to yellow outlines.
- Abstraction Confusion: The similar desaturation between enemy and friendly smokes makes quickly parsing which is which challenging.
This demonstrates how CVD accessibility needs still exist even in titles with colorblind modes like VALORANT. Ensuring players can adjust colors not just on a global basis but per-game element would greatly enhance playability forcolorblind players.
In Their Shoes: CVD Gamer Anecdotes
To emphasize just how greatly colorblindness impacts everyday gameplay for a diverse range of gamers, let’s examine some revealing anecdotes from around the web:
Diffusing the Bomb: ""I have a red-green deficiency. In CS:GO, looking at a bomb I could never tell if I was far enough away from it to not take damage… I died a lot learning how far away red meant. I eventually just bound a key to play a sound when my character entered the damage radius."" – Todd M.
Hunting By Ear: ""Games that highlight enemies or interactive objects with red are really difficult… I can hear the gibberish voices of Borderlands’s lootable items, though, so I locate a lot that way! The beeps and hums make a huge difference."" – Sam W.
Cherrypicking Heroes: ""I don’t play LoL much anymore mostly because the red v. blue colors mess me up… I can’t CS very well or notice ganks so I avoid carries. Bright neon colors like Zoe work for me though! Easy to track those spells!"" Elaine Y.
These stories help put a human face on the CVD challenge in gaming while proving that purposeful design better supports all players. There are fantastic opportunities to leverage other sensory cues like audio or animation alongside color, knowing a subset of players rely exclusively on those alternatives.
By the Numbers: CVD Analysis in Gaming
Now that we understand the real impact of CVD for players, let’s crunch some numbers around its prevalence specifically among the greater gaming population:
- 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of CVD – 13 million+ gamers likely affected based on market size estimates.
- Of CVD diagnoses, the vast majority (~99%) manifest as forms of red-green colorblindness like that experienced by TenZ.
- 1 in 12 men experience red-green anomalous trichromy, while 1 in 200 have no working copies the red- or green- detecting gene at all.
- Even with the option to activate colorblind support modes, only 17% of affected gamers take advantage of those accessibility features due to difficulty discerning their usefulness.
These statistics demonstrate that while colorblindness certainly gives rise to gaming obstacles, there are fantastic opportunities to better serve this large subset of players through thoughtful design and testing.
Principles for Colorblind-Inclusive Design
Creating great experiences for colorblind players means taking their needs into account early and often. Below are several best practices any game studio can adopt:
Customization is Queen: Personalization empowers users to tailor interfaces for their individual needs. Granularity (per-element control rather than just filters) and flexibility provide enhanced accessibility.
Vary Visual Channels: Don’t rely exclusively on color-coding to convey critical game information. Leverage size, shape, animation, textures, icons and audio to reinforce signals.
Test for Perception: Work directly with colorblind testers when developing key interface elements and abilities to understand their ease-of-interpretation. Iteratively refine tricky components.
Default Accessibly: Technology now exists to algorithmically quantify colors’ suitability for conveying distinctions based on common forms of CVD. Employ smart defaults.
Promote Your Options: Many players abandon clumsy universal color filters that worsen as much as they correct. Reinforce availability of targeted accessibility settings through multiple touchpoints.
Embracing these principles plants the seeds for gaming experiences equally welcoming to all players. But speaking of welcome…
Unconventional Approaches to Colorblind Support
While customization and accessibility settings represent a common avenue for empowering colorblind gamers, truly innovative studios take things several steps further through integrations specifically targeting CVD‘s root causes:
Direct Lens Integration: Dynamically shift problematic colors in-game to accommodate players wearing color-correcting glasses/lenses. This personalized hardware/software combo tackles issues at the source rather than just masking them.
Procedural Accessibility: Algorithmically transform entire scenes based on a player’s input deficiency to create naturally optimized, bespoke visuals catered to them. holds incredible promise for not just colorblindness but hearing, visual and cognitive conditions as well!
Computer Vision Assistance: Employ camera input to subtly overlay visual corrections atop real-world scenes surfaces when using augmented reality devices. Enable pass through support with proper color signal boosting/transforming lens filters.
By embracing these emerging methods of seamlessly adapting games to each player‘s physiological needs, studios reinforce gaming’s status as an inclusive medium that respects both the technology and diverse humanity powering it.
Evaluating the State of Colorblind Support
Given the insights we now have into the real gaming difficulties introduced by CVD, how well are contemporary titles actually supporting colorblind players? While most AAA games offer colorblind modes, few achieve exemplary status just yet.
However, certain franchises shine as pinnacles slowly nudging the rest of the industry forward through their implementations. Here are some noteworthy examples:
Overwatch: Blizzard added a full colorblind suite allowing not just color filtering but also modifying UI element colors individually. A custom crosshair enables marking enemies prominently.
Fortnite: Epic built a robust colorblind option combining color filtering and intensity tuning to highlight contrast between different hues rather than changing outright. Support for various severity levels helps.
Call of Duty: Alongside color filters, the latest Modern Warfare also shifts the entire color palette to enhance perception for certain deficiencies. Less reliant on memorizing initial color schemes.
Unfortunately VALORANT, as a newer title, lags behind contemporaries by mostly sticking to simplest color overlay adjustments. But by learning from other leader’s innovations, Riot can continue improving support for colorblind players like TenZ.
My Own Colorblind Gaming Journey
As someone who struggled for years compensating for my red-green deficiency in games myself, I empathize deeply with what TenZ and millions of other CVD gamers encounter daily. Small interfaces issues that typical players brush off as forgetfulness or momentary lapses can tank our performance and enjoyment.
But through my own journey mastering titles like League of Legends, Destiny 2, CS:GO, World of Warcraft and yes, VALORANT, I’ve picked up countless tips for overcoming color-coded challenges. I’d love to pay forward that knowledge to help fellow CVD players unlock their true gaming potential!
While I can’t condense every hard-won lesson here, a piece of universal advice I have is to deeply familiarize yourself with customization tools for critical UI elements in whatever titles you play. Unlike hoping developers will address accessibility ahead of time, self-optimization sidesteps that dependency so you can thrive right now!
And if you’re curious to hear more about my own story learning to raid lead top progression guilds or attaining Diamond-tier competitive rankings while colorblind, catch me on my Disability in Gaming podcast where I spill all my hard-earned secrets. The only true failstate is giving up, so stay determined!
Let’s Recap…
Throughout this extensive deep dive, we’ve explored numerous dimensions around enhancing accessibility in gaming for the millions of passionate players dealing with color vision deficiencies:
- Examined TenZ‘s struggles perceiving VALORANT‘s colors properly due to his red-green colorblindness
- Dove into the science behind CVD to appreciate challenges it poses in popular game designs
- Related motivating anecdotes of colorblind gamers adapting through audio and texture reliance
- Crunched key statistics quantifying the prevalence of problematic color confusion
- Provided expert design best practices for integrating colorblind support
- Assessed pioneering accessbility advancements on the horizon
- Critiqued the landscape of current colorblind modes in top titles
- Shared my personal advice for overcoming visibility obstacles as a lifelong colorblind gamer
It’s my sincere hope studies like this further dispel misconceptions that colorblind gamers lack the visual capacity to compete at the highest tiers. With inclusive design practices, intuitive customization options, and some perseverance, full enjoyment is absolutely possible for players like TenZ, myself and countless others limited not by our genetics but the constraints of design.
So developers, keep pushing that envelope! And players dealing with unclear screens, keep hustling workarounds and alternatives. Because the vibrant, explosive worlds we love exploring deserve to be seen clearly by us all.