Colors are massively important to how video games communicate information to players.They’re
used as signals that let people know what to expect from something by just glancing
at it. And as games have grown as a medium, they have developed a sort of color language
that almost anyone who plays them regularly are familiar with.
Like, green and red are typically used to show a character’s health, most commonly
with green being for when a character hasn’t taken much damage and red for when they’re
taking hits or close to death; yellow and white are often tied to navigation whether
that be through waypoints or directional markings in a level itself; and blue is almost always
used for magic.
Of course, these colors weren’t just chosen at random; they’re based off of cultural
associations and how colors occur in the natural world. So with health bars, green is the color
of grass, plants, and leaves when they’re in season, and red is the color of blood.
Both are physical representations of various states of health. For navigation, white and
yellow are the colors of stars in the night sky and lights in the distance, both things
that have guided travellers for thousands of years. For magic, blue is the color of
the ocean and sky. It’s the color of focus and tranquility, so while I personally don’t
know what real magic looks like, it makes sense that its color would be tied to nature
and control.
Whether it be for things on a menu or environments themselves, specific color palettes are used
to get us to feel a certain way based on our prior experiences and understanding of colors,
and the connection between how colors exist in the real world and video games is generally
easy to see.
And then there’s purple.
Purple isn’t all that common in nature. It’s a color that for a long time was reserved
only for those wealthy and royal enough to afford it, and that has become its most common
association.
But in games, it’s different.
In games, it’s the color of tainted water and air.
It’s the color of forbidden and unnatural magic.
It’s the color of being taken over by a malevolent force.
It’s the color of something spreading that must be stopped.
In games,
it’s the color of corruption.
Until recently, I never really thought about this connection, but once I did, I couldn’t
stop seeing examples of it. From the pools of malice trying to spread across the countryside
of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild to the poisoned ponds that have overtaken Niwen in Ori and
the Will of the Wisp to the fully sprouted weeds littered throughout my island in Animal
Crossing: New Horizons, purple and its various shades, often are used to represent that which
threatens to take over the natural world. It is a creeping danger that the hero can’t
ignore.
It’s used to depict poison and things related to it, like in color palettes of poison type
Pokemon and the meter slowly fills up as you trudge through Blighttown in Dark Souls. It
signifies danger. It is something not to be trifled with. A lot of villains, especially
those who were once good but have shifted due to some power outside of their control,
have some element of purple in their appearance. This also goes for characters who, while not
explicitly evil, are inversions of the heroes, like Wario and Waluigi, as well as Ravio and
Hilda from A Link Between Worlds. It is an unnatural force challenging every aspect of
the world we know. It’s magic that is mysterious and dark, like shadow magic in World of Warcraft
and even the Nether Portals in Minecraft.
And the question I keep coming back to is why purple? Massive purple blobs don’t cover
dying forests, poisons aren’t easily identifiable by their purple hue, and almost none of my
enemies wear purple on a regular basis. So again, why purple?
And like many complicated questions, the answer is a lot of stuff, probably.
Most of the things that purple ends up representing in games don’t exist in the real world,
so when adding these elements developers are faced with the tough task of figuring out
how these things should look. Sometimes it may be as simple as them just liking the color
purple, but generally I think there is far more to it than that.
The easiest connection to make between the color itself and the idea of corruption comes
from its ties with royalty. Purple became associated with the ruling class because they
were the only ones who were really able to afford it. The process of making purple dye
involved harvesting a certain type of sea snail, and in order to produce even just a
tiny bit of it, it took extracting liquid from thousands and thousands of them. This
led to it becoming a luxury item of great expense that those wealthy enough to purchase
it used to flaunt their status.
It isn’t exactly a secret that monarchies throughout the ages have used their positions
to further benefit themselves, often at the expense of their subjects. So, using purple
to symbolize villains, especially those who have been corrupted by power makes a lot of
sense. It’s a way to show that their humanity is fading in their pursuit of self-interest.
On a similar note, given that one of the most common villain tropes is wanting to take over
the world and becoming a supreme ruler, it’s no surprise that villains seeking to insert
themselves into a position of power would incorporate purple into their wardrobe. They
want to show their status, they want to be respected. Taking it one step further, using
purple to show the negative effects brought on by those seeking power helps illustrate
the danger they pose.
Another potential reason for its common use in this way could be the fact that we aren’t
used to seeing purple all that often in nature. Our associations with lush forests, rolling
hills, vast deserts, and most other typical video game terrains aren’t purple-centric,
so it stands out when it shows up and has the distinct sense of not belonging. This
goes hand in hand with how many poisonous animals in nature have bright and vivid coloring
as a way to warn off potential predators. While purple is not necessarily the only color
found in poisonous critters, given that many other colors already have distinct associations
in games, it's possible that a lot of developers, especially back in the early days when the
there were more limitations on color palettes, went with purple in order to not mix up too
many signals. Furthermore, while most poisons themselves are colorless, a few of the more
historically famous ones like Aconite and Mandrake come from plants with purple leaves.
It may not be the color of the actual poison, but it is a warning of it.
Beyond all of that there are also a handful of reasons tied to color theory. In real life,
most of us would associate black with things like rot, darkness, and evil, but black is
a difficult color to work with. It is hard to shade and contour, and this can lead it
to appearing pretty flat when used in animation. However, purple is far easier to shade, so
it is often used as a stand-in for black as well as an accent color for it. This trend
became pretty popular in early animation; some of the most notable examples coming from
Disney with the Evil Queen in Snow White and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. As animation
is a massive part of video games, they have obviously taken cues from animated films and
shows, and these sorts of color choices are no exception.
From a more symbolic standpoint, purple is the combination of red and blue, two of the
most commonly used opposing colors, with blue typically taking the role of the hero and
red being the danger they face. So purple is almost a sort of middle ground; it has
the feeling of transition, and when considering the use of purple for characters who were
once good but have slipped in some way to the side of darkness, purple as transformational
color feels fitting. They are in a state of uncertainty, but are far from where they once
were. Similarly, while purple is used to represent darkness, it isn’t sheer black; there is
still light in there somewhere, which means there is still some hope of restoration, whether
it be of a plagued countryside or of a hero who lost their way.
Purple works so well as the color of corruption because it gives off a feeling of being able
to be fixed.
The associations we make with colors are weird and fascinating. And it is incredible to think
that video games have influenced so many people’s personal associations with them. I think both
video games and animation deserve a lot of credit for how they play with our understanding
of colors. Purple has been defined for centuries by it’s rarity, and animation and games
have taken that influence and shifted it in a major way. They took a color that had been
coveted for so long, and made it abundant. Even more importantly, they made that abundance
threatening, and now I can’t see purple without thinking of the spreading threat of
corruption.
And speaking of things that threaten our way of life, don’t you just hate cords? For
me, they always get tangled, and I’ve honestly lost track of the amount of times I’ve stood
up while wearing wired headphones only to have them ripped off my head when walking
away from my computer. Luckily, this video’s sponsor, Raycon has a solution to that problem.
Raycon makes high quality wireless earbuds that sound as great as other premium earbud
brands but start at about half the price. I am the type of person who likes to listen
to stuff all the time, and aside from them sounding good, they are also really comfortable,
to the point where I often forget that I’m even wearing them. I’ve also never had them
fall out of my ear which makes them great for exercising and what not.
Their latest model, the everyday E25 earbuds are awesome. They have 6 hours of playtime,
seamless bluetooth pairing, tons of bass, a more compact design that gives a nice, noise-isolating
fit, and they also come in new, fun colors. And if you click the link in the description,
you can get 15% off your order. Raycon makes great earbuds, and I’ve used mine literally
everyday since I’ve gotten them, so if you’re in the market for a really awesome pair of
earbuds, you should check them out. Anyway, thanks again to Raycon for sponsoring this
video.
With that, I just wanted to say thank you for watching as always.
I appreciate you all so much, and I hope you have a great day and/or night,
and I will see you in the next one.