Science is serious business. Emma_UK wrote on gamespot:

According to boffins studying first-person shooter Unreal Tournament 2004, gamers have more of a chance of being on the winning side if they choose to play as a red team member as opposed to blue.

The team of scientists, led by Mihai Moldovan from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, studied the outcomes of 1,347 matches between "elite" teams. The characters for the two teams would be shown to be wearing red or blue, depending on their side.

It would seem to be a detail that would be of little consequence to winning, but the scientists have found otherwise. Based on a 50/50 split, the red team won 55 percent of the time, reports AP, citing the Cyberpsychology & Behaviour journal.

Moldovan said that he believed the reason behind this was that the colour red acts as a "psychological distractor" to men.

Scientists have also found that wearing the colour red seems to give players an advantage in real-life sports. A report by Durham University academics studied four combat sports at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games: boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling, and freestyle wrestling. They found that across all four, those who were donned in red won significantly more fights.

However, Mark Rein, the vice president of Unreal Tournament 2004 creator Epic Games said that the company wouldn't be making any changes to the game in response to the findings. He said, "While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years. We don't anticipate any immediate changes to team colours."