Paintball Hall of Fame - a question from John Amodea

[Hp_lovecraft]

Paintball was invented and built up. Most of us grew up with it. So the inventors were the ones revered. The ones that brought the game to the next level, raised the bar so to speak.

Especially since the early paintmags, like Paintcheck, APG, PCRI, etc, they were all about the inventors. All the bigs names today were made in the 80s, Dennis TIppman, Bob Gursney, Glenn Palmer, Jerry Dobbins, Aldo Perrone, Colin Thompson, Mike Casady. Carter, McMurray, Bob Grizzly, etc.

Those were the roclk stars. In the 90s, players got kinda famous. Oh the Pro you Know. Dave "shopkid" Youngblood, etc. But never as well known as the inventorys.

[Criticalhammer]

With how much intellectual theft, and major corporate BS that occurred within paintball over the last 3 decades, making the sport a legitimate real event like Baseball or Hockey would shine the light into paintball history that I simply would be a shamed to be associated with. Kind of like NASCAR, there was so much blatant cheating, manipulation, and hostile business practices. I say this when I was neck deep in the sport during the golden days of Smart Parts being the Oracle of paintball. Going around making litigious threats against other companies, ultimately aggressively manipulating others into complying to their views or taking them out of business.

A hall of fame means its worth remembering the history of the sport, all of it. Some of the history is worth remember, while some of it isnt. Personally, I don't really care and would never bat an eye if I saw some sign posted on a building about being the home to the "Paintball Hall of Fame". Would not be worth the entry fee.


Some great paintball history that should also go into the PHOF
https://www.pbnation.com/showthread....397602&page=44

[glaman5266]

Sort of an argument whether paintball is a sport vs a game.

And it seems to me to be a good example of an industry where nice guys finish last. There were many patented things that never saw much, if any, litigation (for the good of the sport/game), and some that were “protected” to the max at the slightest sniff of a violation. Those that pursued that are the scourges.

[coyote]

I suppose you can moralize any HOF , or museum for that matter, out of existence.

I don't think it would make the world a better place. It certainly won't make us more intelligent.

[Skipdogg]

Ahh, back when pbnation was the best. Loved that classic Gardner / TK thread. I'm still waiting for the chance to bonus ball the gardners. I hold grudges.

[glaman5266]

Lemme know when you get that chance & I’ll be there.

[DocsMachine]

This is actually part of the problem with paintball in general. You're only advertising to the people who are already playing, such as posting ads on Facebook paintball groups.

That doesn't bring new players in.

And no one is going to advertise to the internet in general- today's marketing is all about targeting- you only spend the money on the group who is most likely to buy your product.

No one is advertising paintball to the general public. As I said before, there's no magazines on the newsstands (and nobody would read them if there was) nobody buys commercial time on TV, nobody puts up a radio ad.

Back in the days when Randy Kimiya was one of the main magazine gurus, he said something along the lines of we shouldn't be fighting to get a bigger slice of the pie, we should be working to make a bigger pie. And that's what I'm talking about here. We're all only advertising to each other. No ones advertising outside the sport, in order to bring more people into the sport.

On the 'Hall of Fame' itself, the problem with that is there's no "weight" to it. There's no cachet, no real prestige. Winning an HOF in paintball is like winning a "what's your favorite color" poll on some internet site.

I have no clever ideas to fix either thing, but the HOF is a nonissue. The overall-paintball thing is something we all ought to be putting our minds to, else this sport will go the way of skyboarding, American Gladiators and that thing where you took pictures of yourself ironing something in stupid places.

Doc.

[ATBen]

My local field ran an AB test with digital advertising. They put out online ads on Google and social media, half were for rental and bday party audiences, the other half to people who may be interested in big games. The rental market ads outperformed the big game ads and now that's all they do. Once the rentals come to the field, they advertise the big game to them there via word of mouth, flyers, and large print game posters displayed around staging. It's marketing 101 and the big companies (GI, Valken, PE) either don't care or can't be bothered.

[Criticalhammer]

Paintball is a game and sport, like a lot of physical activities that require strategy and tactics. But defining if paintball is either/or does not help convince outsiders to take, what we small band of enthusiastic players love, it seriously. That's the problem, most people don't take paintball seriously. Everyone knows what paintball is, and yet a lot of folks choose not to play it.

Amazing how other sports and games developed within the last 150ish years have exploded to become legitimate activities millions and billions take part in regularly. Yet, here we have paintball still trying to figure out what colored pants to wear for work. Simply put paintball is expensive to play and run, requires special equipment, requires very specific controls to play legally and safely, at time hurts tremendously, easy to cheat, hard to spectate effectively, and ultimately has ties to war, warfare, and violence (gun/marker). Hell there was a brief moment when daytime ESPN televised paintball. Paintball had many chances to convince the masses to take the activity seriously.

The PHOF topic was to point out how little people really care. Because if they did, shit that happened through the 40ish years of paintball's history would not have happened. Like the drunken (allegedly) rant from an owner of a industry defining company in plain view for everyone on earth to see. People. Don't. Care. The damage is done.

[THE SHOOTIST]

Hell there was a brief moment when daytime ESPN televised paintball.

I recall sometime in the late Eighties speaking openly in a forum with all the self-appointed "movers and shakers" in the sport whose greatest desire was to get Paintball on TV.
I stated that this was a fantasy, Paintball is nearly impossible to film in any real interesting way, and if you didn't play, you wouldn't watch.
I was immediately "Booed" off the podium, and pretty much Blacklisted.
I guess I was right, and they were wrong, so yeah, that's where my "Kiss my ass" attitude comes from regarding all these self-appointed movers and shakers and their lackeys.

[ATBen]

I mean sure there were paint DVDs, it was on ESPN, there was the TV show on spike, and most recently the Master Blasters doc, but how many non paintball people watched those and started playing? I guess the best it did is get it out there so people could recognize it's nonjiat warmongering rednecks shooting each other, it's a fun extreme hobby that can get as competitive as one wants to be.

[Hp_lovecraft]

Plenty of paintball in TV shows and Movies in the 80s. Thats how I found out about paintball. I never realized that there was a field 3 miles up the road from me! Paintball simply did not advertise because it was seen as a fringe activity. The inconsistent field-finder in APG was pretty much all we had to go by.

I do remember that show that came out in 1990 on the Outdoor Channel (?). The woods games were all unwatchable, but some of the arena-style games were better.... mostly featuring YOungblood running around screaming "check it.... check it". Pauly Shore did some paintball episodes for MTV also back then. You can find those on youtube... but they have Pauly Shore in them, and he has not aged well.

[Chappy]

Hey buddddYY don’t hate on Pauly shore! If you're edged 'cause he’s weazin' all your grindage, just chill!

[ford]

That's the problem, most people don't take paintball seriously. Everyone knows what paintball is, and yet a lot of folks choose not to play it.

Not to be too fatalistic but the state of paintball reminds of the Texas emu craze of the 90's.

Similar to how paintball can be a game and a (iffy) sport, emus can be a pet and a (iffy) red meat.

Most people these days probably look at an emu more as a pet than a meat... same way folks look at paintball as a game not a sport. That perception won't change with a hall of fame dedicated to Emu/Paintball industry insiders but by folks spinning the product in a way that is unique and appreciable to the common city dwelling goober.

Living in Austin, I actually think it would be easier for emu to make a come-back through chic pop-up restaurants using emu meat as a key ingredient in over-priced meals than it would be for paintball to produce a product that is interesting to repeatably play/watch/evangelize for the average person between the ages of 14 - 25 (throwing a random age out there) with tight income and a life that involves some non-trivial amount of time on social media.

[ATBen]

" I actually think it would be easier for Emu to make a come-back through chic pop-up restaurants using Emu meat as a key ingredient in over-priced meals than it would be for paintball to produce a product that is interesting to repeatedly play/watch/evangelize for the average person between the ages of 14 - 25 (throwing a random age out there) with tight income and a life that involves some non-trivial amount of time on social media."

I think you just summed up the 10 man mech tournament revival nicely there too!

[ford]

I do agree, Mech 10-man that doesn't take itself too seriously is a lot of fun.

[bellicose]

I like emu meat...

[DocsMachine]

On the video/TV thing... I agree pretty much 100%.

Prior to the infamous ESPN game, I, too, wanted to see paintball on TV. We'd had a couple of semi-decent (for the day, and the technology) videos (VHS back then ) and we wanted to see a slick, high-dollar presentation. The camerawork of a Superbowl, applied to a paintball game.

The ESPN event was almost that, and in a format that emphasized camera access and angles... and it was boring as hell.

We watched it, my crew of the day and I, and I'll readily admit I enjoyed it... for the first couple episodes. Toward the end of the day (or however they presented it- I've slept since then) I was kind of wondering what else was on.

Ditto back in the days of early camcorders and palmcorders- I hit the field a couple of times with a camcorder, and wound up with little more than an unwatchable mess.

Even modern stuff isn't all that great. I have yet to see anyone's GoPro footage that's remotely close to as interesting as an actual game.

The tourney videos are about the best we can hope for- but that sort of thing costs a fortune, with half a dozen cameramen hitting the field with $200K in gear, and shooting a couple thousand hours of footage just to get a halfway decent 30 minute to two-hour video.

The problem is, the tourney videos don't draw in new players. Getting hit three or six or twelve times per game? Carrying and shooting 1,600 to 2,000 rounds per game? That really doesn't appeal to most nonplayers or beginning players.

I'd wager those Pauley Shore episodes- Gene Simmons did one, too- brought in more new players than any modern, slick DVD.

Doc.

[martix_agent]

GoPro footage isn't bad *IF* you have an understanding of the specific field and how it plays; otherwise it's not interesting at all.

[Cunha]

They would basically need to do Hollywood re creations of actual games to get the idea of the game across.

so a normal person knows what’s going on and feels the intensity of the conflict.

modern tournament videos aren’t bad except that they’re videos of modern tournaments, as mentioned 1200 rounds and holding lanes isn’t that cool of a game to most people

[JonM]

Televised paintball, in addition to being boring to watch, has predominantly been portrayed poorly when it is shown at all - often as a skit on some sitcom or the like. If it's shown, the only way people would even watch it is when it's done for shock value, as a reality TV skit, or for or comedic effect. Hell, many times you'd be lucky to even see a hopper on a marker or, heaven forbid, someone's face obscured by a mask. This doesn't exactly make paintball companies want to advertise their products on these shows. Furthermore, advertising for a paintball field has typically had about as much exposure as advertising for a roller rink. In the public's eyes, paintball is just some silly game that they or someone they know may have played once at a birthday party or at a team building event through work and never tried again. The game (I hesitate to even refer to it as a sport) really only appeals to a very small group of people who want to play it even semi-regularly. So, when it comes to advertising paintball, the money just isn't there. As for the players and any kind of Hall of Fame, even as a player myself, I really don't care. The same goes for those who design and build the gear we use. Yes, we can honor the memory of those who paved the road for us, but to have an actual hall of fame for paintball? Meh. Make it a website or something and I may peek at it once before scrolling on.

[DocsMachine]

The video problem is simple... to explain. Considerably more difficult to solve.

With a typical stick-and-ball sport (baseball, hockey, football, etc.) the camera just has to follow the one, single ball. (Or puck, whatever.) Even in things like racing, you just have to follow the race leaders, whether it's olympic swimming, NASCAR or motocross.

In paintball, even just a 3-man is tough to shoot. The players, by the nature of the game, are trying to conceal themselves from certain angles, so at the beginning of the game you have six 'focal points'. And if you skip any of them, you're likely to miss a hit- a "score"- which makes it even less interesting to the viewer.

There really is no easy way to fix that, other than flooding the field with cameramen, and spending a week afterward editing thousands of hours down into something watchable.

And forget woodsball. Try sneaking through the brush with a camera guy wearing a hi-viz vest following you. The only way to film an interesting woodsball video would be to stage it, to script it and shoot it like a TV show.

OR... Cover the field and a bunch of key points and angles, with something like fancy trail cams. Dozens, if not hundreds of them. Make sure they're synced somehow, so multiple angles of the same angle can be edited together.

Heck, you could do something similar with a speedball game- if somebody hasn't already tried it. Something like a traffic cone with a tiny video camera mounted at the point. Spread about two dozen of those on the field, and have them broadcast back to a base station PC off-field.

All it takes is money.

Doc.

[cfos00]

I've thought for a while now that there is a way to do it, but it's expensive. Go-Pro's on every single player, as well as a few on the sidelines, multiple monitors in a production van and crew to man them, and a director for the whole thing. But that would be really expensive and that only works with real, honest to god advertising and a big audience----which paintball doesn't have. So instead, it's youtubers doing their best.

[Cyberpyr8]

There was a media company that was going to do a few tournaments a year and they would film it all, with some additional cameras on the bunkers or within the field. Then they would go back and edit it and do commentary, then release it later as a series in multiple episodes. This was all just pre-covid and once that happened the hype all went away with it. I think they also had the rights to a bunch of older content like the Derder and Monkey with a Gun videos and it was going to be like a cable station with content and programming. I don't remember name now but it sounded like the first real attempt to show paintball and have muggles be able to follow. I think it was a great idea and would have probably done ok. I think with a controlled field where maybe there's cameras up above the field and covering the field it could be done. But the real trick is the editing and added commentary after the fact. Trying to do it live is just too hard to do successfully. GoSports does a decent job with the budget and moving fields from tournament to tournament, but that's never going to allow regular people to watch it and really know what's going on.

As far as the original posts about people knowing the companies and not many of the players at the pro level, manufacturers don't really pay pros to endorse much these days (like they did back in the early 2000's) so why would people know the players? Heck I bet you could name more Smart Parts girls than you could pro players 20 years ago. But the industry doesn't want to pay players and having scantily dressed girls has gone out of vogue to push their goods anymore, so why bother? You also don't have consolidated media venues these days like you did 20 years ago. Back then, even with cable you had only a handful of places to watch sports on TV. Now it's on TV, streaming, social media and youtube. It's hard to advertise to your target audience in one location. If people know your company name and products, that's all they really care about. They don't care of you know Ryan, Nick, Alex or anyone else if they are getting to the consumer without them.

[cfos00]

The answer is actually really simple---who's efforts in the game affected more people? Shouldn't that be who is in the HoF? Makes a pretty simple case for more industry people than players. Not really the case with something like basketball---only so many guys invented the ball.

[Old School PBaller]

Well guys very well thought out posts and good subjects. 1.) The Hall of Fame 2.) The Marketing and growth of the sport , or in this case the abject lack of both. 3.) Paintball on TV

My wife and I were reading them all and talking about all three since this post was made and we had a lot of thoughts on all three subjects. We started to write a couple posts but they would get very lengthy trying to cover all three in one post. We decided to give our input for whatever that is worth, but we will do it in 3 separate posts addressing each topic so it is not confusing.

My name is Phil Kelly . I started playing PB in 1983/1984 . I started competing as a Pro from 1987 at the Air Pistol Open at Jerry Bruans field and played as a pro until 1996. I was fortunate enough to play with some great teams like The Wild Geese , NE Grim Reapers, NE Express and Jerry Brauns Celebrity team after I retired called the "Black Sheep". We won a lot of tournaments and placed in a lot more. I retired in 1996 after playing as a Pro for 10 years.

My wife Norie Kelly started playing in 1985/1986. She started playing as a pro in 1988 with the All Americans and became the First Woman World Champion playing with the AA's when they won the Masters in 1991. She also was a co owner and helped start a very large PB company and has insight from those aspects as well. She retired in 1994/ spring of 1995 after we had our son after playing as a pro for 8 years.

We still played every now and then recrreationally but we came out of retirement in 2006 after getting approached about doing a Paintball TV show made to help "grow the sport " . We did that show , called "Paintball World TV News" , for 6 seasons that aired nationally and was getting over 860,000 + viewers every week. We ended it in the first quarter of 2008 . We will speak more on that shortly.

We still play and have played the last eight weekends in a row. We play both speedball and woodsball and still like both, though we will always like Woodsball far more. We started with bolt action pistols, went through the pump gun era, the semi era and now play using electronic markers. We have basically seen the sport since it started.

Now with that out of the way , we will start with the first of the three subjects : the Hall Of Fame (HOF).

Now in case you did not know it..there is also a Hall of Icons ( HOI) ! And each are done separately and by different people/organizations. The Hall of Icons is new and just started in 2022 with Ryan Greenspan and Quinn from Iconic Paintball I believe.

Looking you will see mainly the "Hall Of Fame " is Industry Notables :

Creators of Paintball guns, PB company owners and execs, PB Magazine Editors etc., the big PB tournament directors from the 80's and 90's and not really as many people that played , though there are some players. I think that is because in the early stages , as mentioned by others here, that was what was "Building" the sport.

The guns that were coming out and progressing the sport along with technology .

The tournaments that were being run by Jerry Braun, The PMI RP Scherer guys (Jeff Perlmutter etc.), Jim Lively, Sam Caldwell and the other promoters were getting bigger and growing the sport.

And the magazines and the Paintball News Paper were also promoting and growing the sport by exposure to non players. You would see three or four magazines in every bookstore and magazine rack and The Paintball News Paper was FREE at every field. They were all in some way PROMOTING and GROWING the sport. (We will also get back to that in another post as well)

So I would assume that is the reason so much of this focus has been on those industry notables and why they are the first entries.

We personally have no problem with the entries so far as they all were all very prominent in getting Paintball growing. I played with five of the entries as well on different Pro teams so there were a few that were great players as well on the list.

In the "Hall of Icons" you will see it is basicly pro players, with many that still work in the industry or are company owners in the industry as well. This is a new organization so there is only one year so far but it is a good group as well. I also have zero problems with the entries here as they are also big in the sport.

So we think they are both off to a good start, but it would be time to enter more players in the "Hall of Fame" for sure. They have obviously noticed as I do not think John Amodea would have posted about it otherwise , so hopefully we will see it addressed and the next round will have more players than industry insiders. Remember they are still both very new organizations.

Do we need either? That is entirely up to your opinion on the subject but we believe that it is good to recognize peoples efforts .

[uv_halo]

Thank you very much for sharing!! I started playing just a few years after you (89), and I too have always preferred woodsball over speedball (and it's variants). I've had a few stops and starts (the longest absence being about 5yrs) but, I'm back in it.