While I'm not digging the effects of this metagame on this thread, I must say that I'm truly astounded by Valve use of psychological marketing. It's incredible, really incredible. I'm actually speechless.
I work in a tiny ad agency (think Mad Men, but we have crappy beers, wear nerd t-shirts and are poor as shit instead ) and we couldn't come up with stuff like this even in our wettest dreams.
It's like when we went to summer camp and we were put in different teams.
You can bet that most kids did their damnest to shame the other teams and win.
Uh... thinking about it, my first team ever at summer camp was The Greens. This is destiny obviously.