Is paintball back?

[vijil]

I knew I'd get better responses on MCB

(gybe... yeah I've been watching too much yachting lately. Anyone follow the SailGP or the AC75s?)

I really hope those saying we've stabilised are correct. It would be great to see some consolidation and efficiency work happening. The idea of a field rating system is a very good one and pretty low effort - you'd just need to set up a website/channel, visit a bunch of fields, and put your ratings on the site. Follow up with a good marketing campaign. How quick would you be sued for defamation though?


Brace yourselves for my best CEO hat idea to date (it aint much but whatevs)

50 cal was obviously launched in the worst possible way, but seems to have found a niche as a rental option. Some fields are 50 cal only these days.

I'd often thought a good way to bridge the gap with airsoft/gaming while keeping some of the pros of paintball would be 50 cal magfed roundball - it would keep costs to play down, is accurate/good *enough* for most folks, and FS is always an option if you want to spend more. I have this wild idea of a magfed 50 cal pro series, streamed on twitch, using something like 50 cal EMF100s (stripped back to a non-milsim look) and a gaming inspired format like this. Could it work? I dunno, but it maybe solves a couple of problems with the pro game as well as the progression from noob to pro. It would be supplemented and fed by weeknight indoor leagues for workers. That's a big market here.

Obviously the upfront investment would be significant and you'd need to pretty much ignore the existing PB market, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

I'm a marketing guy - I manage marketing for a company with ~500 staff so I need my thinking hat on a lot, so I certainly see the issues with how paintball is marketed. The bigger issue though is that no amount of marketing can make up for a crap product, and unfortunately I don't think our product is that great any more when compared to the competition. Hence the above.

I also helped with the HK army 1v1 format, but I'm not sure that one's really taken off. How interesting can 1v1 really be?

[kevin qmto]

I love 1v1 as a format, played a year long tournament series of it during 2020 and it was quite popular.

[Meleager7]

Promoting low impact .50 cal play to introduce new players to the sport is such a no brainer to me. Less pain, “good enough” performance that still makes for a fun experience, more ammo capacity. If .50 cal paint would have been offered as a cheaper alternative to .68 like it was first promised, I think it really would have taken hold in a bigger way. I have this feeling that fields might be getting their .50 cal paint balls cheaper wholesale, but then selling at same .68 prices, and keeping the profits. Yes, it might help them stay open in short term, but it certainly doesn’t help grow the game when the experience could be more affordable to a family with several kids in tow. A shortsighted view, in my opinion!

[kevin qmto]

I'm surprised how well my area is doing these days, its been busier than its been in the past decade around the St. Louis area. within a 2 hour drive of STL, there's 9 fields, I was shocked it was that high after I started counting them, and 3 of them were fields that opened within the past 3 years. Long standing fields like Xtreme Paintball Park and Wacky Warriors have been making new fields or revamping old ones to keep it interesting, and most weekends its packed.

[Arthur]

lots imo down beloooow:



Does the pessimistic view gybe with your experience?

Paintball as a whole? Yes.

Paintball relative to other similarly scoped hobbies/activities? Yes.

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

In the long-term, yes absolutely.

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?

Rental/Party/Field Market:
Kids these days don't want to be shot by .68 cal. They won't admit it but its why they go to airsoft.
.50 cal is plenty for a pack of new people
If you can't bring yourself to go .50, then lets please try rental pumps again. Way easier to police and less of a hazard. Provides a much more consistent and fluid game experience.

Scenario/Big-Game
Too much electro spam events abound. If you're a seasoned player you can get around the wall of paint. If you're anyone else, you're basically not able to move without getting preened.
Most of the people I see at SG are too afraid to move up, they're basically just long balling all day. How fun is that?
People don't want to spend money on that anymore. Its not fun for the casual consumer.
We need new formats, like pumps only, mech only, stock class, pistol only, basically anything that gets us away from a hopper. Pump or magfed games allow for more fluid movement on the field.

Product Verticals
Being an early adopter in the magfed world I've seen plenty of people, groups, fields, producers, even insurance companies, throw some serious shade on the entire format. Any other hobby industry would leap at the opportunity to scale a growing interest in their sport.I think we're past all negative jazz but did we miss a window of growth? Hope not.

[russc]

Most of the people I see at SG are too afraid to move up, they're basically just long balling all day. How fun is that?

If paintball was nothing but longballing, I'd quit. This is why I've given up on big games. The fun vs.cost ratio is just so off kilter compared to a day of recball.

[Arthur]

And I enjoy ridiculous big games because there's something wrong with me. But even I recognize that it doesn't create repeat business.

[Marauder_Pilot]

As someone who flew halfway across North America 5 years in a row to play OK D-Day, there is ABSOLUTELY an upper limit on the size of a game where the actual gameplay just gets worse. Like you get a few amazing moments there that you simply can't get anywhere else, but once you get more than, say, 200 players per acre of play it just turns into a shitshow of longballing and heat stroke.

[Chuck E Ducky]

I stopped playing big games myself. I don’t enjoy them. Save for a few wacky ones like ION. Because all my friends get together for the weekend. I will take a chill day of reck or outlaw over big games any day.

[Tinybear]

I think a easy way to make rec ball more “fair” is to either run separate groups for renters and owners Or if #s don’t allow you could simply dumb down the owners equipment with a gravity feed only rule.

That being said I’m encouraged by the rise in mech play. I feel this is moving things to a more fun and sustainable way of play.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Telling people they can’t use the gear they just spent all there lunch money on won’t go well. Separating the rentals is the only effective way.

[vijil]

I've generally considered the rise of mech to be a bad sign. It represents the market catering more and more to existing or old players, and less and less to new players. That means in turn that we lack new blood and are pretty much just going through an illusion of growth which is really just a death gasp.

At least, that's the take I'd put in an industry report. I'd balance that with the flipside - it may show a path to real growth. It's not the fact that mech guns are mech that's their advantage, it's the lower ROF. We've been saying for years that lower ROF and limited paint (like magfed) were a good move - but a decent chunk of the industry including and especially paint makers have dug their heels in, to our detriment. Pro leagues should have gone H+1 years ago. Heck there's a lot of things they should have done years ago. That said I think Kore's biggest weakness is that the people in charge are too jaded and cynical, and probably don't genuinely care about paintball.

[Marauder_Pilot]

Normally I'd agree, EXCEPT for the part where the industry standard 'base gun' is now the PE Emek. It fills the slot that the 98 filled for decades, in as much that it was equally widely used as an rental and an owners gun, except that the Emek is perfectly viable in every form of gameplay save maybe competitive non-mech tourney play.

Plus, most fields these days are capping in the 10 BPS range, a range where a purely mechanical marker can comfortably exist. 10 years ago, sure, it'd be a sign of crusty old people carving out their own niche away from the agglets but now I think that the kind of play represented my mech guns is just normal paintball.

[Tinybear]

I disagree. For the average persons coming into the sport mech semi is what they have always played since the mid to late 90s.

The difference was as of the 2000s and up the owners equipment started getting faster and faster with electronics and ramping etc.

Mech is simply put more sustainable. I used to make really good $$$ when I ran the shop of a truck dealership (hated the job but the money was good). And even then as an adult I could not afford to go play every weekend and dump cases of paint. But going once a week and shooting a bag of paint ain’t so bad.

Mech, pump, or magfed are all good ways to slow the rate of play to a more sustainable way of play.

the argument was always selling more paint is more profitable. But the flip side to that is it’s more costly to the player and thus they can’t afford it as offten. People only have so much disposable income. I think it’s better for the sport to see people more offten even if there spending a bit less.

A it will work out to potentially the same or similar revenue. And B it will have more regulars at the field. Both are good for the sports sustainability.

[wunderbarsafari]

I've generally considered the rise of mech to be a bad sign. It represents the market catering more and more to existing or old players, and less and less to new players. That means in turn that we lack new blood and are pretty much just going through an illusion of growth which is really just a death gasp.

At least, that's the take I'd put in an industry report. I'd balance that with the flipside - it may show a path to real growth. It's not the fact that mech guns are mech that's their advantage, it's the lower ROF. We've been saying for years that lower ROF and limited paint (like magfed) were a good move - but a decent chunk of the industry including and especially paint makers have dug their heels in, to our detriment. Pro leagues should have gone H+1 years ago. Heck there's a lot of things they should have done years ago. That said I think Kore's biggest weakness is that the people in charge are too jaded and cynical, and probably don't genuinely care about paintball.

I’m a returned older player. I originally quit in 2005 because the speed wars made even walk on play suck. I dipped my toes in back in in 2018 and found the mech revival to be highly appealing. I didn’t have a stash of old gear. I’ve purchased new masks, guns, loaders, everything. I play as often as I can, buying more paint than I need. I feel no obligation to play though. I’m back because the sport has an enjoyable experience to offer now. If that fails, I’ll quit again- life is too short.

I’ve met quite a number of other recent returnees like me who are excited about the sport for the same reasons and they’re spending the money to prove it. It’s hard for me to not see this as genuine growth because we aren’t teenagers. In fact, a lot of us have kids old enough to bring out and are less shy about bringing friends, coworkers or partners. I think that personal connection to regular players makes it more likely for those people to become regulars as well.

So I’d argue that getting players back into the game is a great strategy for the future. Why wouldn’t you do anything to expand your market? Makes more sense IMO than relying on birthday party rentals or people playing COD to just have an epiphany.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[The Inflicted]

As I see it, the biggest barrier to the growth of the hobby right now is the difficulty of players finding players. With Call of Duty or Fortnite or whatever, all a kid has to do is tell the game to go into multiplayer mode and the software does all the work of matchmaking for them. With paintball, the kid convinces his parents to drive him an hour to the paintball field only to find there's no one there that Saturday. Again.

If I'm Empire/GI/JT/Tippmann/Disney/PepsiCo and I already own 85% of the North American paintball market, I put a bunch of my free capital into designing and promoting a free-to-use social media-type app that helps and rewards players getting together to find games. Loyalty awards for check-ins, rankings, video posts, whatever, and then put a QR code to find the app/site on every product I sell so that little Jason doesn't give up on the hobby when his mom drives him to an empty field for the third time.

[ATBen]

As an executive director of a non profit credit counseling organization and financial counselor with a background in marketing, here my 2 Canadian cents (about 1.7 US cents).

Does the pessimistic view gybe with your experience?
Yes, since about 2012.

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

No, not to the industry. As long as the fields keep the rental parties and airsofter/laser tag/nerf groups happy, regular players and the once or twice a season types can play when they can. Offering up axe throwing, escape rooms, and bars are great options to bring in more revenue. The industry will produce, the fields will promote, and customers will pay

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

1) The industry needs to die off a bit. It's too big and too unwieldy now, like Pepsi and Coke brands. When there were smaller independent manufacturers there was more competition; ingenuity, price points, quality.

The industry needs to stop milking its customers and investors dry, just so Richmond can buy a jet and invest in weed and so Tom Cole can buy another vacation home. Quality and supply have taken a big hit and covid made it worse. 3D printers and garage machinists are finnaly starting to get off the ground, and that's great.

Big money open and independent tournaments like Bunkerfest need to grow and supplant the current xball format too. Screw your division, play it and rank in it if you want, but if you think you and your squad can handle playing against pros and amateurs, put your money down and step up.

2. Stop advertising to kids. Advertise it as an weekend warrior/extreme sport for adults and the kids will organically flock to it. "Tell me I can't play paintball mom, and I'll want to do it more." That was my thinking. I mean, according to the ESRB, 13 year olds shouldn't be playing CoD with Wolf anyway.

3. Integrate the tech kids and parents use already, the smart phone. AR tech, mapping, avatars, leader boards, wall of shame, scoring, comms, sports science, bluetooth, can all be done on our phones now. Whether it's a check in after the game in the staging area, or bringing an old phone out and finding capture points, loot boxes, resource genators etc... it's already being done by Ronin Kinetic Esports which has 2 apps, a super LARPY one and a more shootyball version.

Picture playing Pokémon Go with a paintball game going on. Just insert your preferred theme and go. If they can get proper HUDs in paintball goggles again (like the ski and snowboard stuff they have now) you could call in an air strike, look up, and see planes flying and dropping bombs. Boom. You'd even see the explosions where they fell. Shoot a nerf rocket, boom, tank explodes.

Fields as mentioned should have a universal ranking system, have clean air fills, and top quality paint of course.

Essentially we now play paintball at airsoft and adventure parks, so we need to support them and all kenetic tag sports. Also bars. Golf courses do it. If parents aren't playing, why not have a beer while waiting for Billy to finish up?

[Jonnydread]

You have some interesting takes on things, hmm.

[ATBen]

It's funny how often I hear that.

[Jonnydread]

the argument was always selling more paint is more profitable. But the flip side to that is it’s more costly to the player and thus they can’t afford it as offten. People only have so much disposable income. I think it’s better for the sport to see people more offten even if there spending a bit less.

I have been saying this for YEARS! Some field owners seem hesitant to host limited paint days, but if you show us weirdos a good time WE. WILL. COME. BACK.

[Havoc]

Well said weirdo

[Chuck E Ducky]

I don’t understand why it matters. Charge me more for entry. They must know there profit margins on the average player with paint and entry. Make it up in the entry at the same time promoting good quality Paintball. It’s a win win

[Shaftski]

I'd like to see tiered pricing for play based on marker class. Cheapest for stock class and highest for electro machine guns. Put more refs on the electro guys with the extra $$ to keep things under control. We needed essentially zero supervision on saturday playing 10rnd, one ref could have handled 30 of us fine.

Encourages you as a player to use a slower shooting marker to save money, not just on paint. Less shooting means less mess to clean up and fewer refs looking out for shenanigans.

Then rip me of at the snack shack for your profits. I'll gladly pay if it's not garbage.

[AtomJaay]

I'll throw some digital futurism into the hopper...

• Take the Niantic AR framework and any of the VR metaversal engines, for example, to create a feedback loop into the physical field locations through lore and scenario gamification. Make the rest of the world an arcade and the Home Field the irl location where you take advantage of your spoils
  • Location based AR fun for non-combat resource capture/control and lore progression.
  • Social VR representations of irl fields for the same goals as AR or "sparring" in the virtual, team practice, clubhouse effect, etc (voting on field revamps and designs through this medium has cool possibilities for a field owner).
• AI is watching you... There is a way to capture highlights of your experiences on a paintball field in the same way that OverWatch does really really well. Basically your local rec field is gonna be set up like 1984 with cameras from every angle and a god's eye view for the AI who's telling the epic story of each player in gifs and clips and all manner of shareable media. (i feel like a low tech version of something like this with player tracking and points n stuff was tried a while back as a package fields could buy to vidya-gamify recball)
• Everybody is watching you... for legit tourneys, stereoscopic and 360 views can be streamed out and anyone around the world can watch from the vantage point of their choosing. A vantage point that can be changed as quick as the action shifts so you can be where the actions is when it happens "because you saw it coming". It's a far less passive form of participation in a sporting event and organic to the nature of the activity than any attempts at filming paintball in the past.

[gabe]

2. Stop advertising to kids. Advertise it as an weekend warrior/extreme sport for adults and the kids will organically flock to it. "Tell me I can't play paintball mom, and I'll want to do it more." That was my thinking. I mean, according to the ESRB, 13 year olds shouldn't be playing CoD with Wolf anyway.

100% This. Not only has paintball been alienating it's highest paying customers (adults) for years but also marketing to a demographic that really doesn't have the money to throw a case of paint at other people every weekend.

Besides that you're totally right on kids flocking to "adult" type sports. One of the biggest things for me as a 13yo getting into paintball was my parents said I was too young for it and forbid me from getting into paintball. That just motivated me to mow all the lawns I could and figure out ways to get to the field to spite them. Honestly pretty clever on their part, it got them out of a lot of paying for paintball stuff and giving rides to the field.

[tennispb]

Thought I'd throw my hat on here.

My hypothesis:

Paintball is nurtured and grown at the local levels. Regional fields need to be more sophisticated and curate the customer experience. By mirroring key mechanics of popular "esports" titles, we can have interesting things happen to the sport, including growing interest in the tournament format of paintball, and doubling down on the community aspect of paintball.

Reasons to believe:

We should be taking a page out of the esports playbook. Game devs have done a phenomenal job of gamifying the customer experience at every step for all users.

All new players quickly understand that the "ranked" format is what the pros play. Game devs make an effort to make sure everybody is moving in the same direction, they make new players appreciate high level gaming quickly.

A simple "rank" aka skill based match making can go a long way in paintball. I understand that tournaments and divisional paintball exists, but ranking implementation at the field level is what I think is missing.

The goal for fields should be to ramp up new players into playing the same format as pro play (5v5 airball). I realize how unrealistic it may seem but hear me out, a concerted ecosystem wide push could be what is needed to elevate broad awareness for paintball.


High level strategy: Retain and Grow

Give people a reason to return, reward player egos, and allow new comers to appreciate high level paintball.


Some thought starters (How do we do it?):

Scenario fields = unranked
Airball fields = ranked

Scenario fields (unranked/tutorial)
- Most refs are paintball enthusiasts, leverage their passion, and have them "coach" and train new players in proper shooting form, ambidextrous shooting, and the value of strong communication.
- New players (rental players) start at scenario fields, however be exposed to signage of competitive play / leaderboards.
- Experienced / vet players unfortunately should be barred from playing with rental players completely.

Airball Fields (Ranked)
- Gamify the experience, track wins and losses and track historical scores of teams to establish ELO
- Establish team names / points that are tracked in some sort of database that is publicly viewable at the field aka leaderboards (celebrate their accomplishments)
- Establish local "rank system" so players are incentivized across all levels. Must be visible and distinct so new players know who is successful (unique wrist bands?)
- Skill based separation, to play with better teams, you need to win.
- Automatically slot solo players together to create pick-up game teams.

Benefits:
- Player Retention - teams will want to return to protect and promote their rank
- Player reward (achieving mini goals, moving up the rank at your local field)
- Everybody has competitive games
- Growing the team aspect / community
- Appreciation for tournament paintball = more interest / viewership = Bigger sponsors / stakes


Half baked idea post that became way too long, but would love to get your guys thoughts.

Unpopular opinion:
Pump should be the default play for competition, lol.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Rank system is a terrible idea. It destroyed competitive paintball. I couldn’t play local events for years because I was ranked nationally. At the same time people that knew certain people got there rank dropped with a mouse click.

Ranking fields is just asking for pay to play fraud. Just another gimmick no buddy will follow threw on or keep track of. Who going to pay for all that labor and ensuring it’s accurate? The fields running on shoe string budgets? Sorry sounds good on paper but never gonna happen. The overhead of just keeping track of it all is more then all the fields budgets combined. No way you’re getting them all to sign on and pay. Without that you have nothing.

You would have to build it up yourself and use it as leverage and force them like APPA. Paintball dose not need another APPA.

Also who is this for new players? How many new players are going to go online and look to see how there local field is ranked. They are not. They might check prices, maybe look at some photos. But there day revolves around convenience. (Location and price)

The Experience is what keeps them coming back. Fields need to focus on the new player experience. Easiest thing is separating regulars from rentals. Especially toxic regulars.

There was a Buddy system movement on FB that I thought was a great idea. Where people could learn some basic skills from experienced players. But it fell off like every other idea. Because peoples hobby time and money is limited. Just like the rest of paintball there isn’t much money in it. So it’s only going to last until whoever is holding it together gets board. Right now the average American attention span is about 8 seconds so good luck.

[Shaftski]

APPA rankings combined with insisting on shoving xball down everyone's throats is why I stopped playing tournaments 20 years ago.

Being able to play AM B NPPL and amateur NEPL at the same time improved my game incredibly fast. I wasn't playing NPPL to win, I was playing to improve. Now all the sudden, because a handful of self-anointed individuals say so, I could no longer do both leagues. Now my growth as a player is slowed down.

If you want to rank fields, let the public do it informally, with google or yelp reviews, something like that. Industry sanctioning/certification organizations are almost always corrupt and internally manipulated. Let the public decide what works and what doesn't.