By There is a running joke in Wardogs that playing as the blue team is basically choosing to lose. Now the numbers confirm the meme: Lonestar, the Blue Team, wins only around 15% of its matches, while Red takes about 36% and Green dominates with roughly 49%. Developer Bulkhead admits the stats are real — so what exactly is going wrong?
Lonestar soldiers on the battlefield (Credits: IGN)
How the Meme Became Real
Wardogs is a free-for-all sandbox military game where three factions battle for control over an ever-shifting zone in the middle of a huge map. Valkyra (Red Team) rocks a Soviet style, Manticore (Green Team) wears Persian gear, and Lonestar (Blue Team) looks like a Western paramilitary outfit. All three get the same equipment and, on paper, the same chance to win.
Yet Lonestar has become a community punchline, immortalized in dozens of fail montages showing Blue Team players crashing helicopters at base and missing every shot except the ones aimed at their own teammates. At the height of the “Blue Team bad” movement, Lonestar’s win rate sat at roughly 10%. A recent grassroots effort by redditors to “wash off the cobalt stain” has pushed it up to about 15%.
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
According to Bulkhead co-founder and UI director Howard Philpott, the roots of the curse go back to the alpha. Before release, Blue was actually the most popular faction, with players drawn to its limited lore and American PMC aesthetic — which meant lots of newer players gravitated to it. On top of that, early alpha builds had a genuine map advantage that sent the more competitive players fleeing to Red and Green.
That perception never went away. “Blue is bad, don’t join blue” became the default mindset, so competitive players kept picking Green and Red to chase wins — which kept Blue losing, which kept the perception alive. Philpott even joked that Blue Team’s reputation is something of a PR issue. There is also a map theory: Blue spawns sit slap-bang in the middle of the map while Red and Green sit on the sides, making Lonestar feel like it is fighting a war on two fronts.
Can Color Psychology Explain It?
IGN even consulted Karen Haller, a color behavioral design and color psychology expert, to see if the color blue itself was somehow putting players off. Her answer was honest and funny: she was just as confused as everyone else. Normally, she noted, people tend to pick the first option on a selection screen — and in Wardogs, that is Blue. Instead, players actively skip past it to pick the other teams. The color does not explain it; the meme does.
Season 2 Tries to Break the Curse
Bulkhead is not just laughing along — Season 2 arrives with a “social experiment” to change Lonestar’s fortunes. Team spawns are being moved on the Bakuriani map to kill the two-front-war disadvantage, and Season 2 introduces extra cash and XP for Lonestar victories, plus bonus rewards for teamplay actions. Any faction sitting at least 40 points behind second place also gets a 20% vendor discount to help it fight back.
The update went live on October 15 with a fresh arsenal, new vehicles, balance changes, and fortification options. Whether bribing players to pick blue will finally end the curse remains to be seen — but at least Lonestar pilots will get paid extra for crashing their helicopters this time.
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Source: IGN — read the full story there.
