Has paintball lost it's target audience?

**uv_halo** · 11-06-2025, 11:28 AM

Originally posted by The Hobbit

Serious question, what actions do some of you expect the industry to take, in order to enlarge the audience? PE already makes magfed options and semi routinely highlights scenario/woods play.

Is Tom Cole and MLPB supposed to take up the mantle of advertising rec play? Seems like a lot to ask when that isn’t their “product”. Though maybe they could make (better?) efforts to advertise fields near events.

Does someone need to make a series highlight rec and scenario events? Probably not the worst idea but someone would need to step up, with money, to make it happen.

on a serious note, the old Specops Paintball game finder could be a valuable resource. Somewhere that you can post your outlaw game or mini scenario event. Problem is where can you host this that will get eyes on it, so inactive players potentially see and dust off their equipment?

The industry sells a good variety of gear presently. What's missing is a significant variety of playing formats, excluding scenario/big game play. And by format, I'm not talking about MilSim, MagFed, etc.

Right now, the current NXL field is 150 x 120 feet, and there are 32 individual sized bunkers, plus two large bunkers and a snake. This field is made to support either 5 or 10-man teams. On the same size field, Five-man plays quite a bit differently than 10man. Most paintball presently has similar player/land densities, and most games are meant to go around 30min. I'm saying make it bigger, I'm talking a field size in terms of acreage.

Then, give them more time. And in that game time, give them something more to do than capture the flag or elimination, i.e., more ways to win the game. If you're worried about someone getting shot out in the first 5min (less likely on a large field), allow for periodic re-spawns, maybe favoring the disadvantaged side.

You're point about a game-finder is spot on. The industry could help with this. The outlet would be PB Extravaganza, with industry getting behind it (and even promoting it via their dealers, etc) it would help. My disgruntlement is that this could've happened almost 20yrs ago. In that time, the industry was pushing hard on just getting folks to shoot more, and it was left up to just one company to try and change it, and as a competitor (because they made gear) that might've killed that idea from the start.

**uv_halo** · 11-06-2025, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by Tarsun2

there might be a revival with Mil-Sim (in the most general form) much like airsoft (extreme tactical gear and attire); but this wouldnt be the paintball as we see it today. i dont think it would ever lead to competitions either...
To me, paintball (as a sport) is like the sport of sailing. (kindda).

there are some televised events but not much and there are small groups of hobby racing that exist only in their own small realm (in one size or another). My father sailed J24's and everything was a big deal in their group, but nowhere else. the sport is small and very niche and that was kindda it. you also dont NEED the latest and greatest to go racing, but to be competitive, it helps.

id be $ that the sailing community has had the same conversation that were having here.

I don't want speedball (the field format, the rules, the players, etc to go away). I am also 100% fine with it being it's own sport. I'm against the essence of the field format (small area, high player and bunker density, and minimal concealment options) as being the only format aside from the occasional scenario or big game.

**uv_halo** · 11-06-2025, 12:07 PM

Originally posted by Fubarius

Sure you could have, by not using the word speedball. That has way too many specific connotations. Besides, modern speedball is boring, and not all paintball is boring.

Besides, speedball is just artificial woodsball. The snake? just some fallen logs that always seem to be on the side line of any small to medium woods field. Doritos? Just a row of pine trees.
Admittedly airball fields are a mediocre analog to a good woods, hyperball is obviously better, but at it's core it's just a bunch of trees and bushes.

I have a more nuanced view. Speedball as designed by CS village is a smaller format field, with no concealment and lots of hard cover, and a relatively higher number of players on it. Most playing fields today are essentially this. A lot of the brush is cleared, they stack dead wood to make bunkers, and sometimes even bring in man made materials (barrels tractor tires, etc) and even build structures. The problem is the size of the playing field, the density of these structures, and the relative number of players they put on these fields. A great example are those fields where you can clearly see the opposition at the other end of the field to start, even though you're playing 'in the woods'.

**Fubarius** · 11-06-2025, 01:10 PM

Who's better at what is irrelevant in the long term. Or it should be if we want this Game to continue.

Note I said Game. The sport side, well as long as we have a healthy and prosperous Game with many players the sport aspect will take care of itself, it's appearance and format may change, but I don't care about that.

From a game point of view a skilled and talented player is NOT the same thing as a Good player.

A player can win every game, eliminate half the team all on their own, have perfect fundamentals, but if he's a douche, he can completely ruin the game for every other player on the field. He's a bad player. I've known quite a few of these. Heck one or two were teammates. Sure they could improve your team ranking by the end of the season, but I wouldn't invite those losers to a bachelor party group or want them attending the same scenario game as me, not in a million years.

Mean while a player who can't hit the broad side of a barn, can't seem to keep his elbows tucked in, can't read the field, can't seem to find anyone in even the slightest bit of cover, well that player sucks at playing. But if he's fun to be around, adds to the enjoyment of his fellow players, say he always cracks the perfect joke right before start horn, comes up with interesting plans for the more skilled players to implement, never wipes, never plays on, never lifts his mask early or puts his barrel cover on late, calls out his hit right away and congratulates the player who shot him, and jogs back to the dead box with a smile on his face ready for the next game.... That's a Good paintballer.

If an NXL player in the woods "dominates" or not isn't important.
What's important is if I'm sharing a bunker or fallen log, or big bush with an NXL player in the woods, will he be a Good paintballer, or will he be a douche?

**Heavy_D** · 11-06-2025, 01:17 PM

When I described this Thread to Google AI and asked it to animate it... haha

**Heavy_D** · 11-06-2025, 01:28 PM

Velcor Came to Me Via AI and told me to Spread the Good Word!

**cockerpunk** · 11-06-2025, 01:40 PM

Originally posted by cstx_pb

Typical condescending tone while talking out of your butt. You are clueless.

Instead of making up stuff you can go to pbleagues and check rosters of the recent winning teams in the ICPL pro division and then you will see that only a couple of people here and there are active NXL pro players. To give a specific examples:

-Last year at the Lone Star Open AC Empire beat PB FIT (fresh after winning the pro NXL World Cup) in the finals with just a few active pros on their roster and four older players (~50+).

-At this year's Classic Cup Team Smoke won. How many NXL pros were on their roster of 14? One. That's it. Image got second with two pros on a roster of 13.

ICPL/10-man is very different from NXL, if you've played both you know. But I understand that you are here to talk at people and not with them, so I'm not going to respond to you anymore.

you should look into this history of the players your talking about. they didnt become 50 year old winning players not playing speedball

where do you think they came from?

Smoke? old speedball team. Image? old speedball team. those rosters are full of old speedball tournament players. smoke started in 1999 ...

like your data points are a better argument for my point, not yours. lol. also most ICPL is speedball anyway, so mostly we are talking about old pro speedball players versus new pro ones, not an AMATUER woodsball team versus a pro speedball team. which, as detailed, would get fucking dominated by a modern pro team.

**Fubarius** · 11-06-2025, 02:01 PM

Originally posted by cockerpunk

not an AMATUER woodsball team versus a pro speedball team. which, as detailed, would get fucking dominated by a modern pro team.

Um, and amateur anything would lose to a pro anything. And it's irrelevant anyways. Nothing about this tells us if they're a douche on the rec field or not.

**cockerpunk** · 11-06-2025, 02:10 PM

Originally posted by Fubarius

Um, and amateur anything would lose to a pro anything. And it's irrelevant anyways. Nothing about this tells us if they're a douche on the rec field or not.

im glad you agree.

but his claim was exactly that dumb: " but if you matched a solid NXL team that has only played on airball fields with ramping electros against an amateur ICPL team in the woods with mechs... they would get munched."

yeah, a pro team is going to fucking smoke em dude.

**Refoogee** · 11-07-2025, 02:19 AM

I get the idea that, if you break it down, there's a basic meta game that doesn't really change much. But, it would be ridiculous to call all formats of paintball the "same" game, especially when there are some very different strategies, and mechanics, and restrictions. Of course a good speedball player also has to be a good paintball player, but that player may not be the best stock class player, and I do think that sort of nuance does matter here in the discussion.

To get back on point a bit, I have a different sort of view. I don't think paintball "lost" its target audience, I think it never got to develop a proper target audience in the first place before it imploded. If you think about other sports, even more recent sports like skateboarding, that community started in the late 1940's, early 1950's, and was culturally tying itself to surf culture. By the time it really blew up in the late 80's, into the 90's, that was going on 40 years to establish a culture, a cultural expectation, and a backbone to develop a commercial industry around. Other sports have had far longer to develop a passionate scene of public clubs, and other organizations, before big industries formed. Football was played for close to 100 years before the Super Bowl ever happened. If you look at paintball it had, what, 15 years before it exploded in corporate attention? Paintball, at first, was starting to culturally tie itself to outdoorsman activities, like hunting, fishing, etc. It was also tying itself culturally to militarism, surplus collectors, and action movie aficionado's. 15 years later, and paintball was forced, from the top down, to change its culture, while the originators of the sport were still playing it. It was a controversial culture, but it was getting pretty profitable, and the industry was worried about growth. As a result, paintball got a weird split identity. The woodsball/speedball divide, the casual/pro divide. Honestly, I think the airsoft/paintball divide largely exists because of what happened here. It's not that something like speedball culture couldn't have developed on its own over time, it's just that it didn't happen all that naturally, and the aesthetics/nuances of that form of paintball never were embraced by popular culture, or by the majority of paintball players.

As for my big personal gripe, paintball fields pretty much all suck, and the whole business model is completely out of whack. Fields should be making a good chunk of their income from having good concessions, branded merch, and pro services. Paintball fields should be a lot more welcoming of places for people.

**cockerpunk** · 11-07-2025, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by Refoogee

I get the idea that, if you break it down, there's a basic meta game that doesn't really change much. But, it would be ridiculous to call all formats of paintball the "same" game, especially when there are some very different strategies, and mechanics, and restrictions. Of course a good speedball player also has to be a good paintball player, but that player may not be the best stock class player, and I do think that sort of nuance does matter here in the discussion.

To get back on point a bit, I have a different sort of view. I don't think paintball "lost" its target audience, I think it never got to develop a proper target audience in the first place before it imploded. If you think about other sports, even more recent sports like skateboarding, that community started in the late 1940's, early 1950's, and was culturally tying itself to surf culture. By the time it really blew up in the late 80's, into the 90's, that was going on 40 years to establish a culture, a cultural expectation, and a backbone to develop a commercial industry around. Other sports have had far longer to develop a passionate scene of public clubs, and other organizations, before big industries formed. Football was played for close to 100 years before the Super Bowl ever happened. If you look at paintball it had, what, 15 years before it exploded in corporate attention? Paintball, at first, was starting to culturally tie itself to outdoorsman activities, like hunting, fishing, etc. It was also tying itself culturally to militarism, surplus collectors, and action movie aficionado's. 15 years later, and paintball was forced, from the top down, to change its culture, while the originators of the sport were still playing it. It was a controversial culture, but it was getting pretty profitable, and the industry was worried about growth. As a result, paintball got a weird split identity. The woodsball/speedball divide, the casual/pro divide. Honestly, I think the airsoft/paintball divide largely exists because of what happened here. It's not that something like speedball culture couldn't have developed on its own over time, it's just that it didn't happen all that naturally, and the aesthetics/nuances of that form of paintball never were embraced by popular culture, or by the majority of paintball players.

As for my big personal gripe, paintball fields pretty much all suck, and the whole business model is completely out of whack. Fields should be making a good chunk of their income from having good concessions, branded merch, and pro services. Paintball fields should be a lot more welcoming of places for people.

this is a good comment.

i kind of agree. there was such this push for legitimacy, for TV, the Olympics, etc, and even at the time i remember being like, guys, i know this is fun, but this seems too fast. and not what the sport needs right now. like watching paintball, pretty boring. so we need to spend some time figuring out, if TV is our goal, how maybe to play, film etc to find something that the layman finds fun to watch about our game before we are paying TV companies to be on TV. cause what we did, was not it. and it cost the sport dearly, and its never really recovered.

racing is re-learning this right now. the reason why racing is fun to watch, is because its has emotional stakes, not cause two cars side by side is exciting. its the drama, its the drivers, its the personalities, its the stakes of what happens on track. its actually not that important what happens on track. its knowing the conquences while you watch.

and i am never a fan of any "split" every sport that splits, nearly dies, and takes a generation to recover. one of the big reasons why i think the speedball/woodsball argument is so dumb and counter productive. its all the same game, played the same way, with the same equipment, like, guys, its the same game. the longer you maintain that split, and get in dick measuring contests about it, the worse it is for the sport.

**Fubarius** · 11-07-2025, 06:10 PM

Filming paintball for a video audience actually shouldn't be too hard, just every attempt has done it wrong.

What's the most interesting aspect of the simple act of firing a paintball, what makes it different than any a gun firing any other projectile?

The SPLAT. Airsoft doesn't splat. Lasertag doesn't splat. Gel ball stuff barely splats and it's clear anyways. Splats are fun to see.

So what do they make the field that's design for filming out of? Stuff paintballs bounce off of. Bad idea for TV/Video

So, easy fix. No more big balloons and giant net walls. Hard bunkers and a clear plexiglass enclosure. Probably in a large warehouse with lots of overhead lighting, lots of places to set up cameras.

But second issue, with the way the bunkers are traditionally laid out most shots miss the bunkers. And even if the outer walls are hard the shot may just hit the ground first.

So the fix is to make sure wherever someone can shoot from or where they can be shot at always has a hard object a few few behind them. That way when a shoot out starts we get to see the flurry of splats going off around the players. So we're talking something like a solid hedge maze, or zig zaggy room to room kind of thing. Takes longer to find your opponent, and you tend to be closer when you do encounter them. So shooting should only occur when there are valid targets. Concentrate cameras there. Before that, maybe an overhead view with some commentators discussing the strategies they see.

Now, the audience has to see EVERY hit a player receives. Preferably in slow motion. Now you can't always catch this no matter how many cameras you got running, so we have to enact the classic game show fix it "Portions of this program not affecting the outcome have been edited/recreated". Just recreate the shot later and edit it in. NEVER change the outcome, we got to have some legitimacy here of course.

Team size will need some experimentation to determine optimal numbers. Too many and it's too much to follow. You can not have anyone getting shot out "offscreen". Too few and things may be over too quickly. There's a Goldilocks number somewhere in the middle. I think 2 or 3 ,but I honestly have no idea here.

Uniforms need to be instantly distinguishable. You have to be instantly able to tell Team Whois from Team Otherguys with just a glance. And my crazy idea for this is everyone needs a unique style. So ONE team gets to wear bright jerseys. One team gets to wear Army Green. One in camo. One in tactical black. One wears jump suits. One wears cowboy shirts. Add a bit of theatrics to it. Not too much, we're not talking WWE here. Just a touch. Let the players express themselves a bit. Force them to express themselves a bit if you have to.

Has paintball lost it's target audience?

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