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Home| Where Have all the Paintball Players Gone? | Published Apr 2002 By Chris Ketcherside |
| The other day I was playing speedball, and I wound up going toe to toe (not literally) with another player. I saw my ball break on his arm, and it was evident from his reaction that he did not feel it. I yelled for him to check his arm, but I fired again to see if I couldn’t get a hit he would notice. Right before he checked his arm, he fired and hit me. Now, I knew I had hit him, but what the heck, I thought, it’s only a game, and I started to follow him off the field. As it turns out, he wasn’t walking off the field, he was walking to a nearby referee to ask for his ruling. Now, this ref didn’t appear to be paying attention anyway, and he proved it by ruling the other player hit first.
Walking off the field I resisted the urge to get righteously angry. You don’t argue with a ref on the field no matter how inexperienced and wrong he or she might be. But, as the rage bled off me, and I thought to myself, "Where have all the paintball players gone?"
Typical Player Group from the Early Nineties I have been playing for eleven years, which, in my mind, makes me one of the middle aged people of paintball, not new to the game, but not one of the elders. When I came on board, the P-68 was phasing out the venerable PGP, and the long barrel pump was on the horizon, and a few lucky ones had constant air. One thing I remember is that there were a lot fewer people playing paintball, but a lot more paintball players. Perhaps I should define my terms. A paintball player, essentially, is someone who believes in sportsmanship, fair play, and contributes as much to everyone else’s good time as to theirs. They come in all shapes in sizes, in male or female versions, carry all manner of markers, and play in recreational games and tournaments, and you certainly can’t tell one by what they wear. But they are getting harder and harder to find. One thing a paintball player is not, he or she is not someone who would whine to ref over who hit whom first in a recreational game. Some have remarked that this is a tournament attitude, but I don’t believe that. It slanders the many paintball players I have seen in tournaments. I play both myself, and I have seen as many paintball players display those traits I listed above in tournaments as I have in rec games. And I have seen just as many people who play paintball for themselves in both. What is happening to them? Are paintball players simply being overwhelmed by the new numbers in our sport that are made up of people playing for themselves? Did some of them mutate as the sport itself advanced in technology and popularity? Are they being driven out by bad sportsmanship? Does it just seem like there are fewer now that there are hundreds of thousands of more players than there were a decade ago? Probably all of the above. Every time I play I see conduct which a few years ago I never would have dreamed of. Not just cheating, but arguments, fights, bad tempers, bad language, and a "me first me only" attitudes. Almost every time this occurs in rec games, where, after all, it is just a game. I’m afraid I don’t know how it started, or what to blame it one, or most importantly, what to do about it. I would urge all of us to be paintball players, but it seems if you are not already, it probably won’t occur to you to change. I also wish I could say it threatens our sport, but it doesn’t. Paintball is more popular now more than ever and will be even more so by the time you read this. But, I can say the disappearance of paintball players means the end of the pure fun of the game that attracted so many of us to it. The worse scenario I can imagine is that someday there are no paintball players left and paintball takes on the reputation of street brawl. Then, its success will suffer, but it will be too late. I don’t know where the paintball players are, but I know what they are. While some people play to win, paintball players play just for fun. Be safe, Paint site design and contents Copyright Mike Wallis |
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