Purple is a color often associated with royalty and spirituality, symbolizing mystery, intuition, and divine connection. Its unique energy blends red and blue, making it a powerful choice in witchcraft and spirituality. The color is also linked to magic, mysticism, and the subconscious mind, encouraging exploration and introspection. It is deeply connected to the spiritual realm and enhances psychic abilities.
Purple is used to increase ambition, business success, and financial gain. It is suitable for protection spells, improving psychic abilities, and influencing higher powers. It is cheerful, whimsical, and playful, often a statement of independence. It is made from the combination of blue and red, showing both the stability of blue and the energy of red.
In color psychology, violet is associated with mystery, magic, and the spiritual. A purple door can signify a practitioner of magic and is the shade associated with the crown chakra, which links us to higher consciousness and enlightenment. Purple is associated with wisdom, creativity, royalty, power, ambition, and luxury. It is captivating and enchanting, conjuring up ideas of magic, royalty, and psychedelia.
In Wicca, purple candles are used for Goddess, God, and Guardian spells. In general, purple is a color associated with prosperity, luxury, femininity, and royalty.
📹 The Color of Corruption – How Purple Is Used in Video Games
I have been thinking a lot about the use of colors in games, so I wanted to make a brief little piece on one of my favorite colors, …
Is purple the color of magic?
Purple is a color often associated with rarity, royalty, luxury, ambition, magic, mystery, piety, and spirituality. It is also associated with eroticism, femininity, and seduction when combined with pink. The modern English word purple comes from the Old English purpul, which derives from the Latin purpura, which in turn comes from the Greek πορφύρα ( porphura), the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity from a mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail.
The first recorded use of the word purple dates back to the late 900s AD. Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic era, with artists using sticks of manganese and hematite powder to draw and paint animals and their hands on cave walls between 16, 000 and 25, 000 BC.
What does the color purple mean in magic?
It is recommended that you take a brief respite from your current undertaking to engage in some lighthearted physical activity and acquire new abilities. It is recommended that the L’Occitane Lavender Harvest Foaming Bath be considered as a means of achieving a soothing experience. The color blue, which is associated with concepts such as peace and protection, can also be utilized for purposes of communication and clarity. The color blue can be employed to guarantee that ideas are conveyed in a comprehensive and authentic manner, akin to a tranquil day at the beach.
What is the purple symbol in Magic?
The expansion symbol in Magic cards indicates the set they are from, with a red-orange symbol indicating mythic rarity, gold symbol indicating rareness, silver symbol indicating uncommonness, black or white symbol indicating commonness or basic land, and purple symbol indicating special rarity. Prior to the Exodus™ set, all expansion symbols were black, regardless of rarity. Magic core sets did not have expansion symbols before the Sixth Edition core set.
Previously, spells or abilities that affected cards from a specific set checked for that set’s expansion symbol. However, these cards have received errata in the Oracle card reference, stating they affect cards “with a name originally printed” in a particular set. Players may include cards from any printing in their constructed decks if they appear in sets allowed in that format or are specifically allowed by the Magic: The Gathering Tournament Rules. The full list of expansions and symbols can be found in the Card Set Archive section of the Magic website.
What is the purple symbol in magic?
The expansion symbol in Magic cards indicates the set they are from, with a red-orange symbol indicating mythic rarity, gold symbol indicating rareness, silver symbol indicating uncommonness, black or white symbol indicating commonness or basic land, and purple symbol indicating special rarity. Prior to the Exodus™ set, all expansion symbols were black, regardless of rarity. Magic core sets did not have expansion symbols before the Sixth Edition core set.
Previously, spells or abilities that affected cards from a specific set checked for that set’s expansion symbol. However, these cards have received errata in the Oracle card reference, stating they affect cards “with a name originally printed” in a particular set. Players may include cards from any printing in their constructed decks if they appear in sets allowed in that format or are specifically allowed by the Magic: The Gathering Tournament Rules. The full list of expansions and symbols can be found in the Card Set Archive section of the Magic website.
What powers does purple represent?
Violet represents royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition, while purple symbolizes wealth, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic. As a rare, sacred color, purple is often associated with delicate and precious flowers like lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet. Its effects on the mind and body include uplifting spirits and calming the mind and nerves, making it a valuable symbol of wisdom, creativity, and wisdom.
What does purple mean in powers?
The color purple is a source of inspiration and motivation for the Western Carolina University Catamounts, symbolizing a unified team spirit and a dedication to excellence. It is associated with positive sentiments, such as support and encouragement, which are expressed through various forms of expression, including the distribution of candy on Fridays.
Why is purple mystical?
Purple, once a royal color, symbolizes wisdom, power, spirituality, luxury, wealth, and nobility. It is between red and blue, symbolizing red’s power and blue’s stability. Purple is also known for its exotic and mysterious nature, inspiring curiosity. It stimulates the imagination, helping people feel inspired and creative. It also has a physiological effect, creating calmness and lowering heart rate and blood pressure. However, excessive purple can cause frustration and aggravation.
The first shade of purple, Tyrian purple, was created from Bolinus brandaris sea snails, which required 250, 000 snails to make an ounce of purple dye. This rare and expensive color made purple clothing costly, with a pound of purple wool costing over a year’s salary.
What does purple signify spiritually?
Purple symbolizes royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition, making it a symbol of quick-wittedness, wisdom, courage, and spirituality. It attracts wealth, wisdom, dignity, and magic, and can bring devotion, pride, independence, and peace. Adding a balance of purple to your life can aid imagination, remove perceived spiritual obstacles, calm confrontations, and re-energize learning. If purple is the closest to your mind and heart, a bracelet with purple threads can serve as your spiritual guide to becoming The Fortunate One.
What color is associated with magic?
The color violet is associated with notions of mystery, magic, and the spiritual in color psychology.
What is the true meaning of the color purple?
Purple, a combination of blue and red, symbolizes stability and energy, often associated with royalty, luxury, nobility, power, and ambition. It also represents creativity, extravagance, dignity, grandeur, independence, pride, peace, mystery, and magic. In an image by Erin Bailey, purple is used to symbolize independence, a woman embracing her surroundings, and a calming effect. The color purple is also used in art to convey a sense of peace and mystery.
What kind of magic is purple?
Purple Magic is a Magic element based on will, spirit, and force of mind, focusing on ice. It attacks single targets or influences their minds. It becomes available before Vyse and Aika set out for Shrine Island. The first Purple spell learned is Crystali chain, costing 1 SP and dealing damage with a 140 base power rating. The cheapest attack in the game is a chunk of ice shattered away, tearing at the enemy.
📹 CANDLE MAGIC: Purple Candle Meaning – Spiritual Awareness & Divine Communication
As we know, purple is obtained by mixing two very powerful primary colors, red and blue. The purple color has always been …
Hey! So, I kind of became obsessed with purple over this past month and wanted to make a brief article to talk about it! I hope you enjoy it. I am working on the next episode of Gaming For A Non-Gamer (yes, animal crossing will be played for it), but in the mean time, if you would like extra clips from the lady I live with’s playthroughs (along with other neat perks), check out the patreon: patreon.com/razbuten Other than that, I have been streaming on Twitch a bunch, so if you’d like my unfiltered thoughts, go check that out too: twitch.tv/razbuten Thank you for, like, being nice to me and stuff. I appreciate it and you. Edit: for all you Terraria lovers, I should have shown a clip from the game. I planned to, but then I realized I didn’t own it, so I figured “well, I have enough examples of this, it will be fine.” I did you wrong, and if I ever make a director’s cut of this article, I will put a clip of it in there. I hope you can forgive me.
Hey man, you forgot something interesting. Purple is also the color of skin getting bruised. When someone gets bruised, it gets purple. So it may also mean that it’s something that has been damaged. It even looks like corruption; because you can even usually see veins or under the skin when it is bruised to the point of becoming purple. Also, people get purple for other reasons. Usually when being sickly, when circulation is cut, out of air, etc. Hope that made sense! Thanks for the article!
The idea of purple being the color of corruption can also apply to places like Japan, where the color purple is commonly associated with death, which is why Lavender Town is the only town with an explicit theme of grief, dying and sadness. It also influenced Rayman’s Japanese localization, as his body is purple, but it was changed to blue overseas to make him seem more heroic.
As a visual designer, one of the main things that makes purple have its specific relevance, is that it is typically tied to a sense of mysticism and unknown matter that we are inexperienced with. This relates to how purple, like said, doesn’t really manifest itself consistently in nature. It has no clear associations, so by default our brain will perceive anything purple as “unknown”. Some social difference do however exist, for example in many regions of southern France the color purple is one of the most widely associated colors of nature due to the vast land covered in lavender fields. But to most other regions of the world, this is not the case. So with the other base colors having clear assigned associations, purple is the one that sticks out and indicates the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unnatural.
Fun Fact: some of the black pieces in The Addams Family musical, including Morticia’s dress, were actually a dark purple and could appear black to the audience based on the lighting onstage. I believe this was for a similar reason as you mentioned – to increase visual interest and depth, but also to keep her from looking washed-out.
Purple is the color of corruption in Minecraft too! The End is basically an entire dimension based off of static corruption. The sky is a dark shade of purple static. And the Endermen’s eyes are purple too. The Ender Dragon herself breathes purple breath. Her eyes are also purple as well. As well as the chorus fruit. Which is a plant of unnatural growth.
1:32 – 2:24 this is one of the things you do so well. These intros that are so perfectly crafted that they almost make me tear up. The way the music starts at the mention of purple and builds to the title, and the more specific uses of purple leading up to it… so good. Awesome job on this and every article.
A couple of things I wanted to note that may be related to the origins of using purple in this way is that it’s been used like this in comic books for almost a century. In the early days of superhero comics, the major heroes almost always wore primary colors, such as The Flash, Captain America, and the one who started them all, Superman. Heck, even the original Green Lantern wore a primarily red costume. As a result, villains (and evil in general) were typically portrayed with secondary colors, especially purple and green. Classic examples of this include The Joker, The Riddler, and Lex Luthor. Because of their association with villainy, dangerous substances started using these colors as well, such as dark magic, evil technology, and, of course, poison often being represented by the color purple. I wouldn’t be surprised if article games use this convention for very similar reasons. Early article game protagonists (Mario, Pac-Man, and Mega Man, for example) also tended to wear primary colors, after all.
Great article, I love this kind of stuff. But what keeps me coming back to this article is the sick usage of music with the “My Only Chance” track. You introduce us to the colour purple with the downbeat of the song ( 1:31 ), already giving us a subconscious message of shifting focus, but also letting the mood of the music help your message. Then you let you voice fall out and bring the music to the forefront with the title screen and the first real drop of the song with a sick creeping purple effect on the screen to further drive home the idea you’re trying to explain. ( 2:06 ) And of course as an avid World of Warcraft fan, I totally geeked out seeing that SICK shot of N’zoth being all menacing. Amazing article editing and theme design!
The first 2-3 minutes for the intro is one of the best I’ve seen for a Youtube article. Setting the tone and the base line with explaining how colours are perceived and represented in games, and then providing a contrast with purple. And my goodness… 1:30 . you are going to say “… and then there’s purple…”, and then hit me with my favourite song from furi (my only chance). Nice. You then go on to explain purple’s uses in games as the music rises and show the title card at the best part of the song 2:00 . The title card itself has yellow for the text and purple for the background(contrasting colours). The purple spreads in the background and then even spreads and covers the text… corruption. Nice intro… Also, 7:00 i think there is something in star wars like that with the person’s lightsaber. Cool that you brought that up
i often come back to this article just to watch and listen to the introduction again. the way it is written, said and edited is absolutely perfect in terms on introduction: the context is set, there is a progression and finally an implicit question that starts the article. as someone who as to write papers quite often i get really inspired by how this was made. this is excellent work, the introduction and the rest of the article, both separate and as a whole. i never thought i would be commenting about that one day but damn good work has to be pointed out!!
“Purple is the color of corruption” Me: looks around at my purple blanket, purple phone case, my purple outfits in multiple games and in real life, and my purple face masks oh yeah, totally. Purple is my favorite color so I have a lot of it. It’s definitely corrupted my life lol. And even if it symbolizes corruption in games, it still has so much beauty to it. It’s peaceful yet lively and stands out. I love it a lot.
I think one more aspect you’ve missed on the color theory level is how purple is on the exact opposite of the RGB color wheel to green (and, sure classical color theory prefers RYB where magenta opposes yellow, but I feel like the divide between physical colors and virtual colors also brings with it those different color theory codings). If green represents life, then purple is the reverse of that – it’s death.
I’ve been playing the Hades a lot recently and I ended up thinking back to this article because, funnily enough, in that game, the color purple is exclusively used for things that are good for you. It’s used for your main progression currency called darkness as well as for power ups that come from Dionysus. Those are 2 different shades of purple used. Maybe it’s because it’s a game that is based on the underworld and so that’s why it’s an inverse of the typical codified game language of purple? The character that is most associated with that color is Nyx, who is a queenly yet maternally supportive figure who provided you with the means to upgrade yourself in the first place. No corruption there, it’s just business as usual for the prince to be trying to escape. Thanks to whoever bothered to read this ramble. Have a good day!
I actually had a discussion very similar to this with one of my art professors when I was in college. I had used a dark purple palette in a piece that was meant to have a creepy, threatening mood to it. She asked why I would use purple when its typical connotation was that of royalty instead of something sickly-looking like green or yellow. I explained to her that much of the media I was familiar with used purple to represent “poison”, specifically in things like pokemon or in any article game where you’ve had to traverse toxic sludge (in regards to that in particular, I think it makes sense to use purple for corrupted water in place of green because green could be more easily confused with regular water or surrounding grassy terrain). To me it had a much darker and more ominous feeling to it than something bright and bold like green.
That is an interesting narrative. I’ve never thought about such connotation, since purple became my favourite color. It is the paradoxical nature of this color that those seemingly oposing forces combine and together form something more vibrant. Ultra violet is also the color of hidden meaning, exclusive knowledge, sympathetic ink and plenty of other things. On the color pallet it is the most energized, and I also like that energy. 💜💜💜
Purple is also a color associated with poison, death, and evil in Japan, much like how we associate some shades of green with poison (chlorine gas), radiation (uranium glow), and disease (vomit and rotting flesh). This is a major reason for why many Japanese media tend to use purple as a visual shorthand for evil or poison. Over time, this shorthand spread (heh) to the rest of the world. In the original StarCraft, for example, purple was not the defining color of the Zerg, it was fleshier, with toxic greens and bloody reds. To add to the “blue is magic” bit, blue is also a common color of lightning, and is on the more energetic end of visible spectrum, giving it that association with raw power.
I made a list of all the games shown in this article along with their respective time stamps. 0:00 Ori and the Will of Whisps 0:08 Doom 2016 0:13 Yoku’s island express 0:16 A Plague Tale: Innocence 0:23 Resident evil 7 0:31 Tomb raider 0:35 Dark Souls 3 0:38 Shovel Knight 0:40 Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice 0:44 Fortnite 0:45 Zelda Breath of the Wild 0:48 Ape Out 0:54 Skyrim 0:55 Animal Crossing New Horizon 0:58 A Plague Tale: Innocence 1:02 Diablo 3 1:04 Sea of Thieves 1:07 Animal Crossing New horizon 1:09 Bioshock 1:11 RIME 1:15 A Plague Tale: Innocence 1:18 Resident Evil 7 1:25 Zelda Breath of the Wild 1:32 Life is Strange: Before the Storm 1:36 Edith Finch 1:47 Mario Odyssey 1:51 Fire Emblem: Three Houses 1:53 StarCraft 2 1:57 Hob 2:05 World of Warcraft 2:27 Furi 2:34 Zelda Breath of the Wild 2:39 Ori and the Will of the Whisp 2:43 Animal Crossing New Horizon 2:48 StarCraft 2 2:53 Hob 2:57 Overwatch Cinematic 3:00 Pokemon Stadium 3:04 Dark Souls 3:07 Afterparty 3:11 Dark souls 3:19 Celeste 3:23 Mario Tennis Aces 3:25 Zelda a Link Between Worlds 3:28 Pillars of Eternity 3:32 The Sexy Brutale 3:34 World of Warcraft 3:36 Minecraft 3:39 Afterparty 3:52 Zelda Link’s Awakening 3:58 Diablo 3 4:03 The Gardens Between 4:08 Ape Out 4:12 Dark Souls 4:14 Armello 4:50 StarCraft 2 4:55 Zelda Breath of the Wild 5:00 Day if the Tentacle 5:04 Child of Light 5:11 Zelda Minish Cap 5:15 Hob 5:23 The Gardens Between 5:29 A Plague Tale: Innocence 5:32 Mario Odyssey 5:33 Journey 5:37 Doom 2016 5:50 Ori and the Will of Whisps 5:53 Dark Souls 5:58 Super Mario Bros.
This gave me some crazy character development ideas for a character, that goes in the completely opposite direction of corruption, aka going from bad to good. But purple is his character color (by that I mean, the main colour of his clothing, which is his jacket), and perhaps he could have this perception that he shouldn’t be connected to it, or wear it. Sounds like a fun idea to play with.
This reminded me of a time when I was like 12 and my mom bought and installed some purple curtains for my room. I remember telling her “That’s a bit of a sinister colour don’t you think?” and she couldn’t see why and I couldn’t pinpoint why I thought so either, I repeatedly associated it with “evil” but I didn’t know why and neither could she understand why I would make that connection. So it was article games all along. Huh. Fancy that.
Many years ago in late High School I asked my fellow gaming nerds why Purple was so often the color used for corruption and the unnatural in games and other media, only to be told that was dumb and didn’t really make any sense. Then I went to the internet for a similar response! Oh the vindication I feel after finally finding this article 8 years later!
Let me start off by saying well done on your introduction. A short narrative explanation about what colours mean as a whole and using that to pivot your case study of purple. The way you brought up purple as a thing at the end as something vastly different and exceptional was a well made hook and I can already tell the article has strong structure. You provide numerous and relevant examples and are able to explain the historical, logistical and biological reasons for why purple is not just the colour of corruption but why it is the best colour for the job. Nature is pictured as healthy so corruption or sickness must be something antithetical to what exists. Given it’s green’s opposite on the colour wheel it makes sense.
Something you didn’t mention was how in early comic books, which shared a niche nerdy space with early article games, used purple and green for their villains to contrast the heroes(red, blue, yellow) and the background(orange darkened for brown) but because green was taken by health/nature, purple was left to be the villain color
I think there are a few more things that could be added like the fact that purple turning to black is also generally the color of necrosis on flesh (at least if you’re white or genreally clear skinned). Also it is a darker color which easily blend with/into black which has you has you mentioned is the color associated with evil, darkness and whatnot… It is also a very good complementary color with bright green which is also often used to signify sickness, vomit, pollution, radiations, etc (usually neon green or yellow-green) so if you have something on which you want that colorto pop out, it makes sens that by contrast they willa lso be predominantly purple.
It’s wild how even I’ve done this without realizing. In a fantasy world I’m making there is a substance known as Violet Hold, a deep purple moss that grows on a golden flower called Golden Violence. This moss, if a person’s body is coated in enough of it, will mutate them into a mix of animalistic forms and depending on the severity turning them mindless, creating my version of Chimeras Even without realizing it people like me subconsciously use Purple to indicate stuff like this because of how effective it is at doing so and how common such a trope is
I personaly really love design. And one of my favorite aspects of design is color. I love color the most in the design of characters. Color is one of the most straithforward way to see a characters personality just by looking at them. You already mentioned red and blue as good vs evil, wich makes purple corrurption. From a differend standpoint, blue is often considered as a cool and collective color, while red stand for heat and intensity. Purple can singal to the viewers/players that someone is more lukewarm in their personality. Driven and demanding but also level headed and analytical.
Interesting line of thought: I think purple is chosen for these things to show corruption as you noted, but also to show life or sentience. Think about fictional computer viruses, rogue AI, or general article game hacking. Its almost universally color coded as red, not purple, despite all these things thematically and mechanically being exactly the same as the other examples: poison, malevolence, dark magic, ect. Purple specifically gives us a feeling of intention behind it. Whatever is purple is never a neutral party in the sense that its just unthinking. Purple is very specifically meant to show a being of some kind with agency or intent, or more specifically, life of some kind. An anti-thesis to green or “mother nature” as it were. Mother nature’s equal, just from somewhere else that isn’t mother nature’s domain, but could just as easily be mother nature, if it weren’t so purple.
N’zoth approves this article. Embrace his purple! Looking back at the PS2 era Spyro remake trilogy, the main antagonist of that series was a purple dragon who gave into his lust for power. So it is interesting that Spyro is a purple dragon throughout all the spyro games and remains as the main protagonist in each one. And in that remake series (The legend of Spyro series), the main question posed by the games is will spyro follow in his predecessors footsteps, would be become corrupted by his own power like the purple dragon before him?
I think there are a couple of real world connections. A lot of times said corruption is some great force of nature, and if you look at some pictures of space, galaxies, etc. they often appear quite purple. Because of this, I think it has a quality of being somewhat beyond understanding in the real world, while similarly being something foreign and unnatural in games.
A really, really good example of purple representing corruption is the Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild (though it does look more pink to me, which honestly makes it even eerier, since pink is usually a happy color)- the smatterings of pinkish-purple blight covering the Beasts to their outside lights being converted from a peaceful blue, it not only gives off the vibe that something is deeply wrong, but that what happened to the Beasts was deeply tragic as well. I can’t help but feel kind of melancholy and sad when working through the Divine Beasts’ dungeons, but there’s also that inkling in the back of my mind that something horrible is waiting just around the corner inside this desolate machine. Also, this article was the perfect opportunity to bring up Terraria, and yet not even a single mention. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. /j
This article was quite interesting, and it also made me realise how subconscious some of this stuff is. When you were talking about the colours commonly used in games – I didn’t really think what any of them meant, but as soon as you said them my brain was like “yes that makes sense”. Just thought that was kinda interesting.
An interesting use of a variant of purple, I find, is Fallen London’s Irrigo. Irrigo is one of seven made-up colours, itself similar to magenta, that don’t exist in places with natural light in the game’s setting. It is described as “The unremembered colour” and “The colour of absence”, having the power to make you forget seeing it, or anything clothed in it.
I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while, maybe in a slightly different way (ie: “the color of evil”). I agree that purple is a very common representation of evil and corruption. However, I’ve noticed not every game seems to share this. In Legend of Zelda, it appears to be a blackish hot pink. In Diablo 3, it’s quite unusually a certain hue of teal (mainly in the expansion). In Soul Calibur it’s sort of a combination between black and red. In Star Wars, there are definitely multiple colors, but generally, the red lightsaber is very strongly associated with the dark side. Make no mistake, your assertion that purple is widely to represent corruption is overwhelmingly true. However, what I am simply adding onto that statement, is to reiterate that while that may be true, corruption might not be as widely represented by purple. Simply put, I’m merely suggesting that while all dogs might be animals, not all animals are necessarily dogs.
I think the first instance where I start to realize how creepy purple can be, was from one particular episode from the original first Ben 10 series. I think it was the episode where one of the main enemies was an Alien that resembled an Egyptian Mummy. And not sure if this is also on the same episode, but Ben had to also fight some bulls that were mutated by a radioactive stone, which also was purple in Colour. Both the Mummy alien and mutant cattle appeared in a really disfigured form, with a purple glow. Now, my most recent experience of Purple being corrupted, is from the ‘Color Out of Space’ movie with Nicholas Cage.
As a loyal Hollow Knight player, Mac and cheese orange had been put into the ‘corruption’ part of my brain, but I have always wondered why purple is typically associated with danger. I always thought it had something to do with how in Japanese culture, purple is seen as evil, but this article was really informative and fascinating! I love to hear people talk about my favorite color haha (and yes I appreciate the Pale Court music at the end)
This is utterly fascinating. Goosebumps is very associated with this kind of clashing, drippy purple sludge world of imagery too. All of what’s said here is true, but purple can also be such a positive color symbolically, so I think it’s largely about functionality that games so often code it as about corruption, contamination and spreading disease, as well as general villainy. It isn’t true that it’s uncommon or consistently negative in nature. Fields of lavender, iris’s, and lilacs are all deeply about the joys of farmhouse decor and wild gardening. Then there’s the wisdom and calm of grey-purple agathist and the long possitive associations between purple and black female power (the colour purple) as well as lesbian identity– of course it also tends to be a more mature female-identified colour than pink. It’s an important wisdom colour in a possitive wikka/witchy aesthetic right now too. All very good reasons for thinking more creatively about which shades of purple can best be used for what in gaming. Leaving room for a less black-and-white color morality in these games means purple should be more than just a brighter stand-in for what you want to read black and evil. It makes sense to use purple water and particular magenta shades as unnatural chemical colors, but yellowing green and greying mustards can also look pretty nauseating for sickly molds. I don’t think the colour can or should be avoided in negative game stuff, it would, however, be nice to see more interesting ways of making villains manacling than going with black-red or black-purple or green-purple colour pallets in clothing.
I’m guessing right now that purple is considered “bad” because it rarely appears in nature. Purple leaves, rocks, bricks, water, etc are rarely seen and thus feel unnatural. Purple is also usually a dark color and in fiction, even in the most natural settings dark colors are usually signify that you there’s something not very good going on. Think about how every fictional spooky woods is usually made of pine or something and is very well shaded.
Just sharing, this article is highly nostalgic for me, because in an RPG game named Adventure Quest Worlds, the typical white, mostly blue, and some golds represented Good, while Evil is mostly red, some black, and lots of skulls. In the start of the game, an enemy rose and created a new faction, he is colored mostly purple, with green veins, and a huge purple eye in the middle of his chest, and said he represents Chaos. Now that I’ve seen this article, it baffles me how much I’ve ignored color schemes in article games, and how much they tell you about a character in first glance.
It’s still one of your best works and as interesting to rewatch. I wonder how not many people have thought about the subject, not only that but you made a really good analysis. Although, the reason I wanted to watch it again is because I noticed that poison is often not purple, but rather yellow-green. It’s mostly purple in casual games which stick to the obvious colour signals red/blue/green. But there are recurring colours which aren’t explained in the article, such as this yellow-green which reminds of illness, hospitals etc. Pink is another obvious one, or grey for everything that’s old. I know the article isn’t supposed to be exhaustive about those, but it’s still useful to notice that all colours have many meanings associated to them, which can sometimes contradict each other.
one really standout example of this to me is the (aptly named) corrupted nullbodies from boneworks. typical nulls are made up of a wireframe human with a basic rig skeleton inside. the corrupted nulls are so because of melon belly, a drink consisting of void energy (the ever present thing that makes up everything within boneworks) and melons. what happens is the wire frame turns a stark purple (at this point, something you’ve pretty seldom seen, at least in any meaningful way) with the texture spreading out across their body, along with turning the skeleton green. this article honestly made a lot of their design click for me in a new way. i’d appreciated the canon significance sure, but now i have a more rawdesign oriented that makes me adore these guys even more