A preferred visual appearance for game avatars based on color theory

Abstract: Context Colors are an important aspect of video games, they have a key roll when designing everything from characters to world objects. Therefore designers and developers need to know what colors that are preferred over others. Objectives This paper tries to determine which color setting that is the most preferred on a game avatar. Methods To do this an experiment conducted with 15 participants. They conducted a two alternative forced choice test (2AFC) with 236 pairs of pictures. All of the 236 pairs were based on color harmonies and displayed on an avatar and a cube. The different color harmonies that were used sprung from the three primary colors of the RGB-color wheel that worked as a base in this experiment. The results that were collected went through a Chi-square test. Result Some interesting results were generated from the experiment. For instance, the most preferred color harmony for the avatar was the split complementary with the base in the primary color red. Second to that was the color harmony triad, built on the three primary colors red, green and blue. The color harmonies that had their base in the color green were with zero percent the least preferred of all harmonies. On the other hand the color harmonies that had their base in the color blue were generally the most preferred among all of the harmonies. Conclusion The main conclusion that was made and that could answer the research question was that the most preferred color harmony for the avatar was split complementary red. There were also some conclusions made that could help to create a more general preference for all kind of avatars, if this experiment would be remade on a larger scale.