

Who Made That Paintball? - fuzzythinker
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/who-made-that-paintball.html

======
AVTizzle
What a trip down memory lane!

Growing up as a teenager in the late-90's and early 00's, I went deep into
paintball.

A lot of friends of mine today kind of chuckle when I tell them I used to
travel and play in a national tournament series, but what a blast it was!

There's great history here. The big American league at the time I got involved
was called the National Professional Paintball League (NPPL). The flagship
competitions were 10v10 capture the flag, and they also had 5v5.

The NPPL at the time was broken down into Pro, Amateur A, Amateur B, and
Novice, with 8 or so tournaments per year culminating in the World Cup in
Florida.

There was a pretty exciting ecosystem at the time, with tons of exciting
paintball marker innovation happening as markers were making the switch to
electronics for the first time with the WDP Angel (a European company), the
Smart Parts Shocker, and others to follow.

Not to mention the mechanics of the old non-electronic markers like the WGP
Autococker and the Automag. The geeky bits of which would absolutely fascinate
all the technical minds of Hacker News.

(for example, check out some of the cut-out animations of the mechanics of
some of these old paintball markers. Customizing and tuning and adjusting were
a total blast back in the day. Way cooler than pogs!
[http://www.deadlywind.com/paintball-
animation](http://www.deadlywind.com/paintball-animation))

~~~
chrisan
I was deep into paintball too in high school and college, nothing national but
traveled with the university club to other universities.

It's been a while since I played any serious paintball, but to me the biggest
downside at the time was the arms race. Obviously the tippman full auto was
banned from competitive play, but after that it was pretty much up to your
wallet. I remember getting my Bob Long Autocoker and feeling invincible. Then
some guys started showing up with Angels and holy crap I was intimidated.
Compressed air vs CO2. Quality of paintballs. Even some of the gear with
neoprene to give you a bit more 'bounce' it all added up.

Paintball was the most fun when we started, everyone with a tippman rental.

After our group started diverging on total spend it because obvious it was
getting unfair. Eventually we all bought tippman pro carbines and required the
same paintballs be used and all on CO2. Not getting CO2 freezing was part of
your strategy! We had much more fun after we removed the arms race, even at
the expense of not being able to tinker and customize.

The Angel guys could go to pub games and light up the poor schleps if they
wanted :P

~~~
AVTizzle
That's awesome. Were you NCPA?

Funny enough - when I was entering High School around 2002, paintball was in
the middle of a big growth phase, and as part of it, the NCPA seemed to have
enough traction that there _almost_ seemed to be a chance that players might
start to have a hope to get college scholarships to play ball.

Definitely relate to you about the arms race. Though I enjoyed the tweaks to
my Autococker including the Eclipse E-Frame, by the time I got out of the
sport in '04 or '05, Intimidators and the DM series really took it to the
limit.

Technically they were "semi-auto" but were walkable up to 14-15 shots per
second and in the X-Ball style play, people were literally going through cases
of 2000 in single matches.

Insane price ramp. Crazy to think it all happened within the span of a decade.

~~~
tonyb
It is a small world. I was the president of The Ohio State paintball team for
a few years. I also helped the NCPA with a website refresh back in the day. I
would have never though that topic would come up on HN.

I spent more money on paintball in college than I care to think about. I has
one of the first "new" shockers. It was one of the first red ones, the serial
number was below #50 if I remember correctly.

~~~
AVTizzle
Hah! I actually started playing paintball when I was in middle school in New
Albany, Ohio.

Did you ever play at the Splatterdome in Colombus by chance? I remember seeing
a shocker there for my first time...

------
Shivetya
Back in the mid eighties, before the craze really took off I was in a small
group who were mostly military and a few off base civilians who spent way too
much time and money on this. We had two competitions, standard capture the
flag which in some ways probably led to my enjoyment of Doom so many years
later and hit man. Hit man was simply that, everyone put their name in the hat
and five bucks. Only rules were, you could not shoot someone in uniform or at
work. Take the target name from your hit.

Lots of hilarity and some good bruises but those were mostly remedied by
disallowing freezing the paint balls. Some really unsettling conversations
with local and base police, paint ball guns can look like a gun in the dark
and if you alter their color it can lead to problems. Most of us had that old
standard green CO2 powered model whose name escapes me.

Speaking for myself, I never even took the hit man game as anything more than
fun, we never had anyone freak out about losing. Most took pride in just not
getting tagged by the next meeting and i think only once did someone take the
pot, it usually ended up as that weeks pizza.

Laser tag was definitely not the same, the primary difference being it doesn't
hurt if you screw up.

~~~
chromaton
The green plastic paintball gun was the "Splatmaster".

~~~
chiph
I had one of those! I modified it with a metal disc on the back of the cocking
mechanism to make it easier on the hand, and put an extended length magazine
on there (you had to aim up between shots so the balls would roll into the
chamber)

pic:
[http://www.vintagerex.com/museum/NSG%20-%20National%20Surviv...](http://www.vintagerex.com/museum/NSG%20-%20National%20Survival%20Games/Splatmaster.html)

I too dropped out at the start of the arms race. Just couldn't afford to keep
up.

------
awjr
That bit in life where people repurpose equipment in ways the original
manufacturers never considered. I hate the term but in this case "thinking
outside the box" comes to mind.

What's more interesting is that even the people that "thought outside of the
box" didn't think there was any more to it other than a bit of one off fun
until they had a massive response from an write-up published in an a magazine.

~~~
diydsp
The interesting point here is that they apparently weren't thinking when they
did it... They were playing and observed how much fun it was. I wonder if any
amount of thinking or even experimentation could have bridged the gap from the
clusters of ideas before and after their original paintball duel.

------
andkon
What a sport, but lately it's been kind of a tragic story. I started playing
around 2003, and played competitively in Canada through to what basically
became the sport's peak.

In 2007 we were playing division 1 in a league with Impact - they'd later
become a pro XBall team - and the first 7-man tournament in that division, we
spent $750 per person for paint and entry for the weekend tournament. We shot
more than 30 cases (that's 60,000 paintballs). We squeaked by into semis, and
then got annihilated.

It made me realize that (a) being competitive at the highest levels of a sport
requires incredible dedication on the part of everyone on a team, and (b)
nobody would start playing paintball if they knew the endpoint of it was to
drop a grand on a single weekend of play.

The dynamics of play got especially rough for new entrants - if you didn't
have the gear that let you shoot fast enough and accurately enough to put in
someone who was posted on you, you'd get stuck and frustrated. The more paint
in the air, the fewer strategic options you had (other than putting more paint
in the air), and the more prohibitively expensive the sport got.

I still love the sport but it set itself up to die the moment there was a
recession, which, of course, came in 2008.

~~~
mahyarm
Why don't they limit the rate of fire of guns in games to limit the financial
ruin?

~~~
andkon
They started to, eventually. I think there's a 10 balls per second cap at the
lower divisions of one of the bigger US leagues. But in most of the leagues I
was in, there were no ramping modes - you'd just shoot as fast as you could,
which was rarely more than 12bps.

Any rate of fire lower than that and it changes the game pretty dramatically.

------
gao8a
Anyone notice a downfall of paintball after the 2008 recession? I think that
era was the peak in terms of innovation and public participation (I'm pretty
sure NPPL was broadcasted on ESPN/Fox).

~~~
yoodenvranx
As some other people already pointed out, Paintball is just too expensive for
a lot of people. I really wish I could play again regularly, but I don't have
the money for it.

~~~
johnward
It got to the point when I was playing that everyone was using $1200 guns and
at that point my $200 marker isn't really much fun anymore. I think the
increase in tech and cost of markers cause a lot of people to be turned off.

------
zequel
Paintball was fun but can lead to scarring. I got a scar on my bicep from one,
it finally faded 10 years later and another one, my 2nd time playing.

I covered up much better but got hit on the finger and received a ball-shaped
scar (it also faded since then). I don't think it's common but possible if you
have thin skin.

That being said, I don't think it's a great idea to increase the pressure on
the gun.

~~~
freshyill
I played paintball only once and managed to get shot square in the throat. It
didn't leave a scar, but it did bleed a little bit, and freaked me out _a lot_
at the time—for a few minutes anyway.

~~~
artmageddon
I've also experienced getting nailed in the throat with a paintball, and for a
real brief time I got worried that it damaged my windpipe. The other most
painful hit I took was right in the "webbed" part on the hand in between
fingers - my hand locked up in pain!

------
JoeAltmaier
Always wondered: why do paintball guns look like they belong to Spaceman
Spiff, while Airsoft (another paintball-style sport using plastic BBs) rifles
are models of real military weapons? Is this a reflection of the psychology of
the participants, or a necessity due to the different ammo requirements?

~~~
notjustanymike
You've basically answered your question. It is possible to get rifle themed
paintball guns (the rifle from "Aliens" is popular), but they don't add much
except weight. Since the ball are delicate, the ammo has to be top loaded to
fall into the chamber. It's basically a combination of physics and
practicality. If you're going to run and sprint for a couple miles, weight
becomes the enemy.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Airsoft has running; weight is still an issue there. I don't see that as an
important difference

~~~
lbotos
From what I understand (Paintball player, never airsoft) people who want to
play airsoft are usually lumped into the category of "milsim" where it's
tactical and basically recreating police/military tactical maneuvers.
"Paintball" which you mean as speedball, is a much faster paced and flashier
game in the sense that style is definitely a factor in the decisions being
made because the field of play is wide open:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4jXOhH_oiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4jXOhH_oiU)

------
jedunnigan
Ah, memories. Hanging out on pbnation, talking shop about the latest markers
and modifying the ones you had. Funny scene, I can imagine it has changed
since I stopped (early 00's).

Paintabll was the first technical interest of mine that inspired me to put my
business hat on; I very quickly realized I could make money fixing, upgrading
and maintaining other people's markers. Was tons of fun. Smart Parts was my
specialty, Karnivore my favorite marker... oh the days!

Too much damn $$ though.

------
julian55
I remember playing a game very similar to paintball back in the 1970s. One of
the other participants has written about it on her blog:
[http://www.chicagonow.com/soapbox-momma/2014/06/my-
friends-a...](http://www.chicagonow.com/soapbox-momma/2014/06/my-friends-and-
i-invented-paintball-in-1978/)

------
comrh
The cost with paintball is prohibitive though. Now that every paintball marker
is set up to shoot 25+ ball per minute you spray away a lot of money during a
full day.

~~~
langseth
Almost no field allows you to shoot 25 bps. Most are limited to 12-15 bps and
300 feet per second or less. Cost is ultimately up to you. We have plenty of
recreational players that come out spend $20-$40 for 5 hours of fun. I really
depends on the field. Find one that caters to recball and you will have a good
time for the cost per hour.

~~~
mpg33
It's been a while since i played so i haven't been up on the technology
but...how is it possible to cap the bps? Is that an "honesty rule" or do most
of the mid-high end markers let you set bps now?

~~~
comrh
The high end ones can set the BPS in the electronics (usually in the grip).

