游戏设计中的色彩心理学编辑本段回目录
颜色是游戏的最基本视觉要素之一，但其心理效应是什么？美国动视的James Portnow认为美丽的色彩及其心理效应与游戏设计息息相关。
Elder Scrolls Oblivion from bit-tech.net
色彩心理学之所以能够独立分解出来是因为附着于颜色的符号意义几乎都是文化适应性所产生的结果。人们的普遍看法是颜色是我们获取图像信息的最基本方式，因此游戏设计师有必要为玩家创建自己的文化参照。从如今的原始直觉机制切换至某种更正式的方式能够让我们以更快速度传递更多信息（游戏邦注：由于用户注意广度降低及游戏复杂性提高，我们非常有必要充分利用所有工具提高信息沟通的畅通性）。
颜色是文化的产物
black white mourning from colourlovers.com
就文化带给颜色视觉效果的影响来看，最典型的例子要数哀伤色调在东西方文化中的差异。在东方文化中，白色通常被视作哀伤色调，用于代表死亡，而西方国家则倾向采用黑色。
在穆斯林文化中，绿色通常具有正面含义，而在美国此颜色通常会让人联想到贪婪。为什么？仅仅因为美元是绿色的。
有关颜色心理学研究的一个一致看法是其影响同情境相关。只要此情况属实，那我们就能够创造自己的情境，然后在情境中通过颜色传情达意。
保留表达的艺术性
只要颜色被当作沟通渠道，大家就会开始担心其艺术表达会因此而受到影响。要理清此问题，你只需回答：文字是否会因其旨在沟通而丧失艺术性？动画是否会因旨在表达含义而丧失艺术性？
关于此话题，我有两个观点：首先，颜色选择的艺术性不会因融入暗喻表达而受到削弱；其次，此表达将适用于各种熟悉的特定情境。
当前认知
此时你多半希望看到某些关于此的实用性信息。先看看到这点：游戏已拥有非常原始的颜色语言。这或许有些平淡无奇，但想想红和绿。
首先，先来看看红色。想想所有你会在其中受伤的所有游戏。我们通常通过让屏幕溅满红色或在摄像头前设置红色斑点表示受伤。回想你首次在游戏中看到此类闪射或斑点画面。游戏无需告知玩家这是什么意思；玩家知道在视频游戏情境中，红色通常代表危险/伤害/警告。
想想若是你把闪光变成蓝色或绿色。这对我们来说就毫无意义。我们很久以来一直都习惯此联想模式，因此在我们看来采取不同路线完全不合逻辑，因为这就像是武断地给某词语重新下定义。若我现在告诉你“猫”是指由内燃机驱动的四轮交通工具，你的大脑定会产生抵制情绪，拒绝接受这样的意思。
但大家会觉得红色非常符合，因为红色是血、火及其他先天和原始事物的颜色。从某种程度上看，这完全正确，但让我们来看看绿色。绿色常在游戏中代表“友好”或“同盟”。此用法主要针对游戏。我们也许会从心理角度将其同大自然的绿色或从文化角度将其同绿灯联系起来，但事实上是游戏中的绿色边界或绿色名字固定代表这样的含义——非敌对。
color from colourlovers.com
运用之处
在多数情况下，用颜色传达意义主要基于广阔的UI，而非实际游戏艺术本身（游戏邦注：虽然很多游戏都完美地将二者融合起来）。
若大家对此感兴趣，我推荐参考《上古卷轴：湮没》。这款游戏不仅通过色彩带动气氛，还用其描绘游戏空间。
私有语言
创建此机制的最大危险在于可能会创造私有语言，即只有知情人能够理解的秘密语言。我们要提防为了形式新颖而牺牲内容的通俗性。几乎所有科学都存在此问题，但科学的目标并非吸引大众眼球。我们不应只是为了更加与众不同而创建新型的信息表达渠道。
但我们能够有效避免这种情况。首先我们需基于常人和日常生活获取线索。我们需将所要表达的意义植入玩家每天都会接触的内容。其次我们可以通过颜色强化其他方式所表达的含义。再次，就像电影观众因曝光度而习惯电影语言一样，我们的用户也会随游戏变成社会现象而习惯其中语言。
总结
随着艺术形式的日渐成熟，我们需要通过开发新工具拓展自己的发挥空间。颜色只是其中的工具之一，但其强大作用不容忽视。
游戏邦注：原文发布于2007年10月12日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：COLOURlover）
Color Association in Game Design
By COLOURlover
Color is one of the most basic visual components of a game, but what are its psychological effects? Activision’s James Portnow looks at all the pretty colors and their psychological effects as it relates to game design.
We’re going to start with the heady and work down to the practical, but this is far from an exact science. I invite you all to share your insights on the subject. Hopefully, with our common pool of knowledge and experience, we can begin to establish a language of color for videogames.
Color psychology breaks down because the symbolic meaning attached to color is almost always the result of cultural acclimatization. Yet it is universally acknowledged that color is one of the most fundamental ways we assimilate information from an image, thus it becomes necessary for us as game designers to create our own form of cultural reference for our players. The move from the primitive intuitive system we use now to something more formalized would allow us to convey greater quantities of information at greater speeds with greater redundancy. As attention spans decrease and the complexity of our games increase, it will be necessary to utilize every tool available to streamline communication.
Color as the Product of Culture
The starkest example of cultural influence on the way we view color is probably the difference between the mourning colors found in many Eastern cultures and those found in Western cultures. In many Eastern cultures, white is considered the color of mourning and is often used to represent death, whereas in the West we tend to use black.
In Islamic cultures, green often has very positive associations, whereas in the United States we tend to associate certain greens with greed. Why? Simply because our money is green.
The one consistent finding of psychological studies on color is that its effects are contextual. Given that that is the case, we can create our own context (i.e. videogames) and then use color to covey meaning within that context.
Preservation of Artistic Expression
Once color begins to be used as a means of communication, one might fear that artistic expression would be compromised. In response I would simply ask you this: do words lose their artistry because they are meant to communicate? Do moving pictures lose their art because we use them to convey meaning?
Rhetoric aside though, I have two points to make on this topic: first, the artistic possibilities of color choice are not reduced by adding the language of metaphor to color, and second, this language will probably be used in very specific and well-understood contexts (for example I don’t think “go” whenever I see green, but I understand the context in which it has that meaning and can intuitively understand when it is being used as such).
What We Know So Far
Ok, so at this point you probably want something practical out of all of this. Let me hit you with this one then: we already have a very primitive color language in games. This may be obvious, but think about red and green.
First, let’s consider red. Think about any game where you can take damage. We usually indicate taking damage by flashing the screen red or placing a red haze in front of the camera. Consider for a moment the last time you first saw such a flash or a haze in a game. You didn’t need to be told what it meant; you knew because you understood that within the context of videogaming red is usually the danger/damage/warning color.
Now imagine if you were to make the flash light blue or green. Somehow that inherently makes no sense to us. We’ve had these associations for so long that we actually feel like taking a different tack is illogical…and it is, because it would be like arbitrarily redefining a word. If I were to tell you that “cat” now refers to a four-wheeled vehicle powered by a combustion engine your mind would recoil and you would reject such a suggestion.
But one can argue that this is true for red because red is the color of blood, or the color of fire, or some other innate and primitive thing. In part this may be true, but let’s look at green. Green is consistently used in games to imply “friendly” or “ally”. This is a use specific to games. One can tie it psychologically to the greenness of nature or culturally to green lights, but the fact still remains that green bounding or a green name in a game almost certainly means one thing: not hostile (1).
So Where Do We Use It?
For the most part, using color as a way to communicate meaning will come into play in the broad UI rather than the actual game art itself, though many games have done a brilliant job integrating the two.
For those of you who are interested, I would recommend looking at Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. There they use palette choice not only to drive the mood (i.e. to convey emotional meaning) but also to delineate gamespaces (thereby conveying logical meaning).
Private Language
The greatest danger in developing a system like this is the possibility of developing a private language, a secret cant that only those in the know will understand. We must be wary of sacrificing accessibility for information content. Almost every science does this (law and medicine are excellent examples) but sciences aren’t meant to have mass appeal. We can’t end up developing a new method of conveying meaning only to have it enable us to be more exclusive than before.
This can be avoided though. First we must take our cues from the ordinary and the everyday. We must root our meaning in things which our users encounter on a daily basis (greying out is a good example as that was common in computer UI before it became prevalent in games). Second we can use color to reinforce meaning conveyed in other ways (this has the added benefit of teaching the interactor the “meaning” of the color schema). Third, much in the way film audiences have become accustomed to the language of film simply due to exposure, so too will our audience become accustomed to such a language as games become a societal constant (though this is something we cannot rely on).
Conclusion
As our art form matures we need to develop new tools to use to keep expanding what we can do. Color is only one of many such tools, but it is a powerful one. With any luck this article has at least sparked thoughts on how it can be used and what it means to actively develop such a tool.（Source：colourlovers）
