Is paintball back?

[vijil]

Hi all,

Please don your CEO hats.

I'm putting a rule on this: no reminiscing about how things used to be, unless it's directly relevant to your point.

The vague consensus on the current state seems to be that:

• TLDR; it aint pretty
• Gaming (and other competition like airsoft) is eating much of the market share for hobbies in the standard paintball demographic. Airsoft passed PB sometime during the GFC.
• All forms of the sport are in a general decline or at best holding steady
• Facebook's restrictions really bite
• In some places it's doing well
• Covid hurts
• Innovation/RnD budgets are unusually low
  
  (I'd add that paintball companies seem very risk averse these days, with a few exceptions. PE getting into magfed is a real bright spot recently.)

Interesting graphic which seems to back it up:

https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...,%2Fm%2F02qh79

So, questions:

• Does the pessimistic view gybe with your experience? Keep this short. I can see that 90% of the conversation on these threads is about the good ol days. Please no!
• Does it even matter what the overall state of the industry is?
• The meaty question: What, in your view, should the industry (I'm talking the big players but also the little guys/fields) do to improve things?
  • Please note "players need to treat newbies nicely" or derivatives thereof are not answers, unless you can specify how exactly to get that to happen - because folks have been saying that since the 80s. Any "people just need to..." idea is doomed to failure.

I'm particularly interested in answers from people with business experience. I've just finished writing a big old 5 year comms/marketing strategy at work and find myself thinking about paintball along the same lines.

[Toestr]

Is paintball as a hobby on the decline? I think so. I think it will live on quite a while under the bowling model - something people do once in a while as a novelty, not as a serious hobby/sport.

Biggest thing I think turns people off the game is a poorly run/equipped field. Why would someone go out and spend a few hundred dollars on a game where they're constantly getting yelled at by refs because they keep taking off their sweaty, smelly, dirty, foggy, scratched up mask? Or they have to sit out a couple games because their poorly maintained gun keeps going down? Or the field doesn't properly sort out their rental/beginner groups from the owner/seasoned players and they keep getting overshot in fast paced game styles? If the initial experience is a decent one, they might actually want to invest in gear.

As for what manufacturers can do, I think they're already doing it. The major companies are already spitting out guns that are simple, reliable and cheap enough for players to get in the game.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[Psycho91]

This I agree with, I wanna play but my desire has dropped off cause fields just suck these days or they only have one speedball and woodsball field and are no fun, or the refs only wanna half reff and don't wanna check players or even call them out anymore, playing with a bunch or newbies or birthday groups gets old to

[Magmoormaster]

I don't have experience running a business, but I spent the last 10 years working at a local store. I would talk frequently, and in fact still do, with the owner on this very subject. I should also mention that the owner also does financial consulting for fortune 500 companies, is pursuing a PhD in Finance, and studied business, econ, and math.

Gaming and airsoft definitely pose some serious competition. For most people, paintball is just about playing CoD in real life, and in that regard airsoft is unfortunately superior. Paintball is ultimately a weird, sport-ified version of milsim LARPing, and "real" milsim LARPing will always have a larger audience. It helps that airsoft is, on the entry level, cheaper and more accessible. It's also easier to get games at cooler places because there's no mess. I've seen youtube videos of games in Europe at some genuinely amazing looking locations. Like, abandoned WWII forts. Paintball will never be able to match that.

And obviously, gaming is the low-effort version of that with as many different flavors as you could ever want.

I would not, however, say that all forms of the sport are in decline. Mech and milsim are seeing serious upswings, and national tournaments are (or were, pre-2020) drawing record numbers of teams in attendance. I'm sure many local areas are struggling; for sure Utah (where I live) is. But that's always going to be the case. Not everywhere is going to have the magical combination of economies, weather, etc, that allow paintball to thrive like SoCal or Texas. Each locale will have its own challenges, and in some places it just might not be sustainable.

Facebook's restrictions are, frankly, grossly overblown. I'm a member of at least a dozen various groups and at worst the restrictions pose a minor annoyance. The only thing it really affects is the used market which has plenty of other avenues. And it's not like the used market helps the industry anyway.

Covid definitely hurts, mostly just because of the disruption to manufacturing and supply chains. But my guess is that it'll bounce back by the end of the year. It'll be a setback, but not a catastrophic one.

I don't think innovation budgets are any lower than they were before. In fact, they're probably higher. The problem is that, before innovation was a guy cutting PVC tubing into pump handles. It was guys drilling holes in their barrels. It was a dude milling a body for PGP internals. It was all garage built stuff. What's really happened is that we've hit a point where to actually innovate requires so much more than it ever has. We're also at a point where the road forward is a lot harder to see. Twenty years ago, it was how are we going to make guns shoot faster, how are we going to get hoppers to feed faster, etc. We don't have such clear easy targets anymore.

"Does the pessimistic view gybe with your experience?"

No, not really. Not on a global scale.

"Does it even matter what the overall state of the industry is?"

Yes, but like I said the industry isn't spiraling right now.

"What, in your view, should the industry (I'm talking the big players but also the little guys/fields) do to improve things?"

On the industry side, manufacturers like DYE, Virtue, and GI need to stop their predatory dealings with distributers. I do think we are reaching a point where in-person stores are really losing their value, what with upgrades being pointless and general reliability of products going way up. Half the peopel working at proshops these days don't know what they're talking about anymore, so you don't get the value of experience.

On the field side, I think it really depends on the area. Utah, for example, really needs some good places to play. There have only been ok at best places to play for at least a decade. But honestly, the real answer is the one you don't seem to like. "Players need to treat newbies nicely." The elementary school answers are oftentimes the most correct. This is very much a niche hobby, we can't afford to push away the few who have an interest. One of the big problems with Utah is that certain groups do the exact opposite of foster new players. They're too busy padding their youtube kill reels. Unfortunately, paintball's biggest problem is the clientele. As someone who was the public face of paintball in my area for most of the last decade, I cannot begin to tell you how many of paintball's regulars are just terrible people. Most people have better things to do than deal with them.

EDIT BASED ON TOESTR'S RESPLY: I agree that paintball will continue with the bowling model. For most people, that's all it's ever going to be. It's simply too expensive for it to be anything else.

That's my take. TL;DR, it's too localized and nuanced to provide a blanket statement "here's the fix," but by and large it's not as bad off as people make it seem.

[Chuck E Ducky]

I played threw the pandemic. Lots of new players playing locally (NY) even with the dome and gloom. I see big turnouts all over my area as population of my state is in steady decline of people who work for a living. So if paintball is in decline I’m not seeing it locally. In fact I see more new players trying the sport then ever.

I prefer outlaw ball with friends anyway so it will never truly go away as long as I can get 12g and paint. I really don’t care about the latest space blaster. Im more excited about phantom mods from the small air smith shops.

I would like to see quality paint options or innovative paint solutions. Paint that shoots straight would be amazing for the sport. First strike are cool and all but I hate magfed and everything that comes with it. I would love to see a large bore quantity ball that could be shipped and stored more easily less susceptible to moisture but still bio degradable so it doesn’t build up on fields.

The fields that do well focus on players experience. Give them a good time they come back. It’s amazing how that works. Dual pane lens rental masks, good shooting clean markers, good safe environment that caters to a new player. Money is not in keeping the regulars happy.

Lots of funny money getting thrown around. My local proshop can’t keep stuff on the shelf and is having a hard time getting products to sell. I see it slowing in the next few years when the massive Inflation getting jammed down our throats catches up.

Social media I believe is a bubble I think in the future information data protection is going to become so much more important then it is to the average person today. Social Media is a cancer on civil society because the majority of people are so easily influenced. Many are stepping away from it myself included. I purged all social media from my life a year ago. My kids don’t exist as far as FB insta tictok is concerned. I’m going to try like hell as a Parent to keep it that way.

[RedLeaderSB]

Here in SoCal the fields have been packed. Can’t even find parking the last several weekends.

[Chuck E Ducky]

That’s the thing I don’t get even as both our states are in steady decline the fields are packed. Maybe it’s because we are paying people more not to work. Help wanted signs everywhere! Business can’t get employees because they are making more sitting home. People got extra cash and time. Paintball is an outside activity so “Covid friendly”.

[Marauder_Pilot]

Gaming and airsoft definitely pose some serious competition. For most people, paintball is just about playing CoD in real life, and in that regard airsoft is unfortunately superior. Paintball is ultimately a weird, sport-ified version of milsim LARPing, and "real" milsim LARPing will always have a larger audience. It helps that airsoft is, on the entry level, cheaper and more accessible. It's also easier to get games at cooler places because there's no mess. I've seen youtube videos of games in Europe at some genuinely amazing looking locations. Like, abandoned WWII forts. Paintball will never be able to match that.

As someone who used to shit on airsoft for years and years, but these days plays far more airsoft than paintball (I haven't shot a paintball gun in over a year and I've played maybe a dozen games in the last decade-meanwhile I play airsoft at the local club pretty much every other weekend, COVID notwithstanding), it's honestly embarrassing how badly we as an industry fundamentally underestimated airsoft as a sport.

We spent the better part of a decade dismissing it as a game for kids and wusses because there was so much more focus on the appearance and the fact that it hurts less.

Turns out most people really like a sport where getting shot isn't actively painful and really dig living out their action movie fantasies in the gear that caters directly to it.

And, while I still honestly prefer paintball as a sport, from an technical point of view airsoft eats our lunch.

Is paintball ever gonna die? Probably not, because there will always be people that strongly prefer one or another for whatever reason, and I think there'll be a lot of regions that, simply due to the strength of the playerbase, stick with one or the other. For example, the airsoft community here is anchored by an exceptionally well run club that was basically given a huge chunk of free land from the local gun range. If that wasn't a thing, you bet your ass paintball would be the more dominant sport-or, at least it'd be more even. And airsoft still hasn't figured out how to offer a competitor to the tournament/speedball format-the best they've figured out so far is just playing speedball with chopped-down airsoft guns, and the format is widely mocked by the community more than anything (Although they've started angling the gear in such a way that they're basically trying to make IRL Fortnite, which, honestly smartest choice you could make there)

Honestly, though, while all the various socioeconomic factors that hurt paintball are big players the biggest thing is that people just got bored. No sport stays big forever, save staple sports like hockey, football, soccer and the like. Paintball had it's time in the sun, it was all the rage in the '00s and now people are just moving on to other things, whether it's a direct competitor like airsoft, an indirect competitor like video games or just players moving on with their lives without a strong marketing campaign to replace them.

[russc]

The paintball industry's strategy of actively avoiding the war game association and aesthetic was a massive mistake. They were still actively trying to keep up this appearance when 9 year old kids were blasting faces off in Call of Duty. Times changed, and I'm glad paintball is changing with it. The Tippmann TMC is a hell of a lot more enticing to a first-timer than a JT Cybrid.

[Meleager7]

YouTube Airsoft viewership also puts paintball to shame unfortunately. That is also greatly helping their sport grow. Their top content creators see millions of views. Our most popular paintball YouTubers might only see 10,000 views on a good day!

[MrBarraclough]

|"The paintball industry's strategy of actively avoiding the war game association and aesthetic was a massive mistake"

One might argue that holding to that strategy past some particular point in time was unwise, but I think it is hard to argue that it was a mistake to begin with. I remember the mid 90s: the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, the Waco siege, the Oklahoma City Bombing, Janet Reno's DOJ. There was something of a moral panic about domestic terrorism in general and the threat posed by the so-called "militia movement" in particular. The new threat from within. And plenty of lazy, sensationalist media figures were perfectly happy to associate paintball with right-wing militias. Remember that the Cold War had ended only a few years before. The anti-Communist paranoia that American society had cultivated for decades was obsolete and we needed a new threat from within to focus on. Your neighbor who leaves early on a Saturday wearing camouflage but comes home with paint splotches and bruises instead of a dead animal? He might be an anti-government nutjob training for civil war with this paramilitary cultist buddies! Sounds silly now. But when a right wing paramilitary nutjob had just blown up a federal building and killed 165 people, people took it deadly seriously.

Paintball's future was very much in peril. Imagine a Venn diagram of gun control advocates and people who clutched their pearls about violent video games: lots of overlap there. Paintball was an ideal target for them and for any politician who wanted to pander to them. And they were emboldened by the passage of the 1994 AWB. Regulations and outright bans were proposed. We needed to lean into the sport side of paintball, and lean hard. Red paint became taboo. We got more disciplined about our language. This is when "marker" instead of "gun" really took hold. As did elimination and opponent instead of kill and enemy. Tournament players started wearing jerseys instead of surplus store fatigues. Annodizing markers in wild colors became popular. The culture shifted a little, so that going full milsim was more likely to be seen as being a tryhard and faintly ridiculous.

And it worked. Paintball survived and thrived. It attracted new players, got onto TV, the tournament circuits blew up, and so forth.

Maybe the aversion to the war game association has outlived its usefulness. Probably so. The milsim kids aren't causing any image problems these days. Airsoft has taught the public that you can go LARPing as an action hero on the weekend without being crazy. It's now okay to dress up in full battle rattle if that's your thing. But I would not say paintball's aversion to the simulated warfare public image was a mistake under the circumstances in which it emerged.

[Shaftski]

Really not that expensive of an activity though. My motorcycle and ATV bills laugh at my paintball expenses. Actually never been cheaper to get into the sport and play with competitive equipment IMO.

I kept reading all this doom and gloom about participation and the state of the sport while I've been out. First time back out was this past saturday. I was REALLY surprised at how many people were out playing, based on what I was reading before that. Participation level, at least around here, seems very healthy.

I'll never touch airsoft personally because of the ammo. Tiny little bits of plastic plastered all over staging areas, parking lots, and wooded areas. If you looked carefully at the ground saturday in the parking lot, most of the small gravel was actually airsoft BB's. It's a disgrace, really.

[Jonnydread]

Dude P&L was PACKED I couldn't believe the crowds for a drizzly Saturday.

[MrBarraclough]

Same reason FSRs should be banned until the manufacturer reformulates them. The fins are polystyrene, which does not biodegrade.

[DocsMachine]

[*]Does the pessimistic view gybe with your experience?

-The word is "jive".

It's been a while since I really had a finger on the pulse of the sport, but being a small-time manufacturer, yes. 2020 in particular hurt things, though things appear to be picking up so far this year.

Does it even matter what the overall state of the industry is?

-Of course. Every company in this sport is in it for the money. The bigger the company, the more they're concerned with the bottom line. We've already lost more than a few companies thanks to economic reasons- Smart Parts, WDP, etc.- and I can bet you money there's a few still out there looking into getting out of this niche market and going into more profitable lines.

You want interesting new equipment? You need quality companies with good designers and the funds to make good stuff. Funds are tight, and the designers leave for better-paying jobs elsewhere? Then you wind up with yet another blow-molded disposable pack with an injection-molded disposable blowback.

The meaty question: What, in your view, should the industry (I'm talking the big players but also the little guys/fields) do to improve things?

-Advertising and PR. Again, I'm not exactly in the center of the market, but I've never seen any paintball advertising that I didn't post myself. There are no magazines- how many of us here got our first look at the sport, through an issue of APG?

The sport needs something like the Ad Council- sort of a third party that gets money from the big companies, and uses it to put out ads that simply promote the sport in general.

For the PR side, some aspect of the industry- either one of the big-name companies, or maybe one of the insurance groups or something, should put out promotional advertising for fields and field owners. Suggested tips on how to improve things for both new and regular players. Tips on how to improve the field and staging areas, and of course, tips on how to run games to minimize newbie-bashing. (Along with explaining why that sort of thing is counterproductive.)

Both of those would take some heavy, and largely unpaid legwork by a dedicated group. Which means it'll never happen.

Please note "players need to treat newbies nicely" or derivatives thereof are not answers, unless you can specify how exactly to get that to happen - because folks have been saying that since the 80s. Any "people just need to..." idea is doomed to failure.

-Unfortunately, that's one of the biggest drawbacks to the sport. It is, at it's very core, negative reinforcement. You fail on the field, something inflicts pain. If you get nothing but pain all day, you're really not going to be all that interested in coming back.

The only thing that can offset that pain, is a win- the kid/noob gets a sweet hit on another player, or at the very least, his/her team wins a couple games.

And really, if you mix the average experienced player in with the average walk-on, you'll never see the walk-on again. Some players do in fact go out of their way to make things fun for the noob, but the fact is, the vast majority of them just see noobs as NPCs to be mowed down on their way to victory.

No, I have no solutions. Well, no workable solutions. One 'solution' would be to require/mandate certain field features and methods of operation, but that would require imposing a license of some sort, and the biggest effect that would have would be to kill three quarters of the existing fields.

I'm particularly interested in answers from people with business experience.

-Thankfully, there's a difference between experience and acumen. I have a ton of experience, but not a lot of acumen. (Honestly- if I were better at business, I wouldn't be in this business. )

As noted, paintball as a sport will never "go away", but it is very much seen by many as a "fad", a fad that's faded. Remember skyboarding? Skydiving with a snowboard so you can do aerial twists and tricks? Used to be the biggest thing going- the centerpiece of a TV show called the X-Games. For a while there, you could buy custom skyboards from dozens of makers. Today? Some people still do it, and you can still get the equipment, but it's not a fraction of what it once was.

If the sport contracts appreciably, basically we'll stop seeing any real innovation. I'd actually be kind of surprised if we made any great leaps forward anytime soon, as guns, loaders and tanks are all pretty dang good out of the box. We could use better paint, though...

A popular, growing sport, even if it's only growing a few percent a year, is something people invest money- and thus R&D- into. A fading, shrinking sport- again, even if it's just a few percent a year- is something investors pull money OUT of.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

One idea that wouldn't require actual licensing, is a sort of ratings group. Sort of like those who "rate" movies to be G, PG or R, etc.

Better fields get rated "A" by the Better Paintball Bureau, or whatever. Less-great fields get a B, or a C, fields with actual dangerous hazards get a D or F, etc.

There'd have to be some kind of "teeth" to it- which may come with that ad-council thing or the PR thing above. An A or B rated field gets help promoting, discounts on advertising, etc and are listed as such (yearly) on the BPB website/Facebook, etc.

C and D rated fields maybe get a little advice on how to improve, F-rated fields get outright shamed (though it may be tricky with libel type laws.)

Probably still not workable, and as there'd be basically no profit in it, it'd never actually happen.

Doc.

[OpusX]

The local field has been around for 25 years, and is typically packed with the "bowling" style walk-on crowd and a very healthy amount of regulars. From my point of view, if you can just keep a fun atmosphere at a field, and convert the "bowling" crowd into that fun rec regular walk-on group, you have what will sustain things for the long haul.

I say this as noobs and oldsters alike don't like to get all "yeeted on" [checks urban dictionary....that seems likes proper usage] by high speed double-click laser beam shooters, and those that do want such play burn out quick and return to the slower roll soon enough.

As others have said, and I repeat, create an atmosphere/culture/social experience that is inviting and people stick around. That is the "future" as it has been the past. When the rental crowd / walk on game, almost looks the same as it did in 1999, something in that model must work besides the Tippmann.

[MrBarraclough]

I agree that local field culture is a huge determinant of paintball's sustainability. My local field mixes regulars and rentals every Saturday, and they can do that because the culture has certain norms about not chewing up the kids that the regulars adhere to and enforce amongst themselves. It starts at the top. The reffing staff sets expectations for behavior and consistently enforces those norms. As players become regulars, they buy into that culture, accepting those norms and holding each other accountable to them. The culture self-perpetuates.

Unfortunately, that same dynamic can perpetuate a flawed culture as well. That's how fields go bad, and it can be difficult to correct if field management has let the cultural dynamic go unchecked for too long.

[Jonnydread]

I'm in the "gotta be nice to newbies" camp, but here are a few concrete ways that fields/players could help return rates in new players:

• Dedicated refs. New players should have the most experienced refs. I cant tell you the number of times I've seen new players get a bad taste in their mouth for the sport simply because they didn't have the proper guidance from the field staff.
• Set up actual, written rules for equipment-owning players if they are going to mix in with rentals. This could be non-agitated hoppers, <5bps firing rate, no pods, low-cap, etc...
• Create and strictly enforce no-overshooting rules. I don't give a shit about overshooting in tournaments, but for rec play there is absolutely no need to drill 20 rounds into a rental then tell them to 'suck it up'. If you are mature enough to rock your own equipment you are mature enough to have some trigger control.
• Foster a friendly social environment outside of the game. As a player this means chatting it up and making friends in-between games, congratulating the efforts of the 13 year old with a rental 98, high-fiving someone on the opposing team for hitting you with a nice shot... we can still be competitive with one another and encourage a positive atmosphere of enthusiasm and support. Attitude is contagious so make sure yours is helping, not hurting.
• Create areas on the field to hang out. This can simply be having fire pits and food, or something more complicated. 2 of the fields I enjoy are setting up bars, and while it will be an interesting terrain to navigate I think it has a lot of potential for friends telling their battle stories after a long day of paintball and cementing their desire to return.
• Ensure your rental equipment is something you'd actually want to use. This doesn't mean fields need to have a fleet of Emeks (though it wouldn't hurt), but make sure your masks are thermal and your rental guns are clean. Even if the field rents 98s or similar, at least give them a wipe down, clean the barrel and a drop of oil. The devil is in the details.
• Let people have fun. You don't like magfed? You think it's silly COD LARPing for paintball? Good for you, now shut the fuck up and let people have fun. If the way another person is playing the game doesn't interfere with your ability to enjoy it, please swallow your cynicism and continue on your way. I sometimes see a lot of hate coming from older players and it's not cool and surely doesn't help foster enthusiasm in newer players.
• Lastly, to reiterate my third bullet, enforce the damn rules. If you have a 1 warning policy for overshooting or shooting hot, once a player breaks the rule a second time - DUMP 'EM. If rentals are the lifeblood of fields then eliminating a single toxic player is a drop in the bucket compared to the negative word-of-mouth you'll be receiving.

In short, I think it falls on the fields (and on us as veteran players) to be ambassadors of the game. Be the guy that the whelps look up, be kind rather than cool, don't jump down a newbies throat if they call a field a 'map', we can teach people without being assholes. Making a small difference in someone else's experience can have a massive ripple effect down the line, positive or negative.

[OpusX]

YES! Post game high-fives, congrats and "battle story" swaps, especially with the newest of noobs makes it happen. I love to be able to give an enthusiastic "great shot!" to a kid that never thought he'd do anything. Sometimes you even see them get the bug right then and there!

[Jonnydread]

OpusX Ab-so-lutely. Nothing brightens a nervous renters day more than having one of the 'cool older guys' compliment their game. Using the term cool very loosely of course.

[MrBarraclough]

I remember back in the mech-only 90s the group I played with had a 3+ ball overshooting rule. You put more than 3 balls on someone, the first three balls eliminate the guy you shot but the fourth one eliminates you.

I've made it almost a reflex when getting shot out to yell "HIT!" put my hand up, turn it into a thumbs-up, point at where the shot came from, and say "Good shot!"

If the one minute warning sounds and I know the game is a stalemate that I'm not going to change in that last minute, I'll usually look for something spectacularly foolhardy to do. If I can't pull off something awesome-looking, I can at least give the kids a chance to take a shot at me. A few more hits aren't going to kill me and I've got pretty good protective gear. Letting the buzzer sound while crouching behind a bunker feels like a waste.

[gabe]

I think paintball is in a pretty good place right now. The predictions of doom and gloom have pretty much passed and despite the market being made up by only a few large companies you still have small shops like Freeflow making decent money making niche guns that sell for a premium. Mech is coming back and getting super popular which helps immensely with the overshooting and even the freshest player can walk into a competitive mech game with a rental and not fell out-gunned.

Seems like we're just in a flatter period in the game's growth right now. Obviously there was a spike in popularity that fell off but now we are seeing a large demographic of players that were in high school in the early 2000's and had no money coming back to the sport now with solid paying jobs and money to send. I mean that pretty much defines most of us on here and MCB has seen fantastic growth even in the age of the decline of non-facebook forums. Lots of the activities in the early 2000's are seeing some level of revival like inline skating, BMX, and I'm even seeing dudes posting videos with tech decks (those little finger skateboards) now so who knows, maybe paintball will make a hipster revival. It won't be like the 2000's but maybe we can set up a solid and steady growth.

As far as the new player front we really need to get on board with a single new user experience across the industry. Not something like licensing but more like an industry standards setting group like the NPPL used to kind of be (but not really) that could perhaps partner with insurance companies to offer a lower insurance rate if they meet standards. Things like equipment, reffing, and separation of different levels of user group. Fields could advertise that they are an endorsed field and perhaps even show up on a field finder type website/app with this standards making body in paintball. What would be really cool is clear definitions of game types and a field finder that would indicate what game types the field offers. With so many people coming from video gaming they really want that selection of what game type (speedball, woodsball, mil-sim) advertised up front so they know what they're getting when they show up to the field. I think the perception is really shifting towards paintball being a competitive type format like CoD is to video games whereas airsoft is more the Battlefield of games with a slower gameplay. In video game terms paintball needs a better "matchmaking" to bring new players in and match them with groups of similar skill level and on fields/game type that they enjoy more. Imagine being on a random game mode map on a clan server and just getting destroyed by experienced gamers with top shelf setups on a game mode that is alien to you. That's the new player experience as it is now.

I guess to just sum it up we are in a good place and can expect a certain level of organic growth from returning old school players but if we can just sharpen up that last bit and really get organized it could do so much better even against airsoft and video games.

[Jonnydread]

tech decks holy shit that's a throwback

[gabe]

One of my high school friends just busted his back out and is putting videos up on Instagram. I thought it was a joke but holy $h!t batman he's getting a ton of views. I guess it's getting pretty big.

[punkncat]

I do think paintball is back. I feel it is a direct result of other industries being closed or limited due to the pandemic. I think a lot of people have gotten sick and tired of being inside, on a computer and such and are exploring paintball (again or for the first time) as the healthy outdoor activity it is. What will be the true test is given this six months after normality returns and check back.

[MrBarraclough]

The pandemic certainly brought me back after 20 years. It killed off my normal Saturday racquetball game and my wife was tired of me climbing the walls on the weekend and not getting as much exercise.

[Cunha]

I think paintball has stabilized. The boom of the electronic era in the 2000's that was all but petered out by 2008 and absolutely went into the shitter for the financial collapse of that year was pretty much the end of an era and IMO the peak of that version of paintballs trajectory.

Now we are in a new phase where even the tourney guys like eclipse are realizing that paintball can't be just about the high profile tournaments.

I see a lot of fields doing nerf or even lazer tag and low impact paintball in addition to actual paintball. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm more concerned about if these fields are ones that I would actually ever play paintball at or if its just a noob progression. There aren't a lot of classic style paintball fields that cater to regular weekend players with some experience but are out for fun and not trying to be tourney guy.

The "mech" revolution I think is bringing us in the right direction for fun semi auto paintball.

[ReconSWS]

CEO hat activated.

Paintball is not back, my role play corporation iiterator inc. has in it's foreward looking statements plans to revitalize the paintball by bringing in new blod via tacticoooool mods for the airsofters / gear junkies / makers, and a paintball vidja game for the mainstream call of duty and fortnite players. If I manage to not gamble away all my future funding, these projected goals seem feasible within a 25 to life timeframe and may have effect on livening up the paintball.

Paintball might just blow to the upside anyway upon reopenings.