Exploring the Impact of Avatar Color on Game Experience in Educational Games

The color red has been shown to hinder performance, motivation, and affect in a variety of contexts involving cognitively demanding tasks. Teams wearing red have been shown to impair the performance of opposing teams, present even in online gaming. Although color is strongly contextual (e.g., red-failure association), its effects are posited to be sub-conscious and operate powerfully even on nonhuman primates, e.g., Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) take food significantly less often from an experimenter wearing red. Here, we present one of the first studies on avatar color in a single-player game. We compared players using a red avatar to players using a blue avatar. Using the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), we find that players using a red avatar had a decrease in competence, immersion and flow. Our results are of consequence to how we design and choose colors in single-player contexts.