•In the free-for-all sandbox military game Wardogs, three teams battle for control of a shifting zone on a large map. Red Team is piloted by Valkyra, Green Team by Manticore, and Blue Team by Lonestar. Though all sides have access to the same equipment and an equal chance of winning, one question has taken over the community: why does the Blue Team always lose?
Lonestar has become a meme within Wardogs. Dozens of montages show the team missing shots aimed at teammates and crashing helicopters before they even reach the fight.
To find out whether this is real or “meme-induced mass hallucination,” IGN asked the Wardogs development studio, Bulkhead — which confirmed that yes, Blue Team does struggle. According to Bulkhead, Lonestar won around 10% of its games at the height of the “Blue Team bad” movement, but a recent effort by Reddit users has pushed the winrate up to roughly 15%. Red currently wins about 36% of matches, while Green takes home 49%.
Some players have theorized that spawn location plays a role. Blue Team spawns in the middle of the map, facing two fronts, while Red and Green sit on the sides. For Season 2, Wardogs is moving team spawns on the Bakuriani map to address this — alongside launching what it calls “a social experiment to help change the perception of Lonestar.”
IGN reached out to color psychology expert Karen Haller, author of The Little Book of Color, for perspective. She found the situation puzzling.
People would normally pick Blue first because it’s first. 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. They’re ignoring it and going across.
Karen Haller
“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.”
According to Haller, who wrote The Little Book of Color, the issue has nothing to do with color itself. She mapped each team onto color theory: Red is fast “like a freight train,” while Green would be the peacemakers — which she noted doesn’t quite fit.
Blue is the color that you play with your mind. It’s intellectual, it’s smart.
Karen Haller
The takeaway: Blue players aren’t losing because of their color. They’re losing because of who ends up on them — those not infected by the meme tend to be “infected by incompetence instead.” Decent players avoid Lonestar precisely because it attracts people who crash helicopters before takeoff or kill teammates during revives.
“It isn’t about any team being bad,” the report concludes. “It’s about groupthink, a military shooter hivemind addicted to Reddit upvotes.”
Kirk McKeand is a Contributor on IGN Actualités. Find him on Twitter @MckKirk
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