Who wants PGI back?

[mrb2287]

Paintball changed ... I'm not really sure if it's for the better or worse but somewhere along the road, we lost our soul, I know that much to be true.

Agreed, there is just way too much bitching, back stabbing and bad feeling for my liking. People are very fickle but i think thats just the way the world as a whole is going now. "If you cant/wont do it/get it then i'll find someone who will!"
Not good

 

[Robbo]

MRB - I think you'll find the back-stabbing and bitching etc was just as prevalent back in the day but I kinda think X-Ball and its derivatives have manoeuvred a younger player into its fold which in itself isn't such a bad thing but for the fact we got a change in attitude to playing.
I may be wrong but it's an observation that I've gotten used to over the years ..

 

[pestilence]

Robbo - have to comment, as it's relevant to me.... a few weeks ago I moved house, and came across a long forgotten stash of PGI and Paintball Adventures....

I have to say there is something awesome about revisiting PGI, it was an excellent magazine. I managed to uncover such gems as your ’99 world cup win, or when the Campaign Cup got a full on stadium at Crystal Palace, or the first Huntingdon beach back in ’05…..and everything in between. The best bits were all about the bitching and backstabbing, the politics of the ‘Ballin universe. It was the gossip (but manly & rugged gossip!) that fuelled a lot of the passion!

I was an avid fan now reduced to an irregular lurker. You certainly can’t get the enjoyment from internet site and forums as hardcopy. They are just not tangible enough to take you back down memory lane with the same effect as a back issue. The early noughties were paintballs golden era – which was fuelled, driven even by such magazines as PGI. Without them the tourney scene, certainly in the UK feels devoid of life in comparison, although granted, I hung up my gun many years ago. L


It is such as shame it couldn’t survive. Paintball is so much less without it L

 

[Robbo]

Hi there Pesty-bollocks,
I think that last statement you made just about nailed it for me - but people can always accuse me [and others]of looking through rose-tinted glasses which of course is a possibility.
I would defend that though but to come up with reasons as to why this should be the case, I might struggle .. I dunno.
I'm not sure some of your dates are correct though, I won my second world with Aftershock in 98 I think and the first Huntington Beach was in 2003 when I took Nexus to the inaugural NPPL event.
I think you make a pretty good point in suggesting there doesn't seem to be anything driving paintball most certainly in the UK this has been the case for a long time.
The internet seems to lack the ability to involve people/players but I don't really know why this should be the case.
Magazines such as PGi united everyone for better or for worse, every player and every interested party had to read those issues, it gelled people, created a fraternity in which friends could be friends, and enemies could be associates ... but we all had to read it.
We were lucky to have Mat Tudor and Steve Duffy aboard because it was those two guys who set the direction and quality of the mag.
We live in digital times now and perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised we no longer feel the same about chosen sport but we can see past that, we can see how players behave and hear how they feel about playing etc ... their experiences are different to mine and yours, they somehow don't seem to love the sport as we did, leastwise in my opinion.
It's a shame really but it's progress .... ain't it?

PS ignore the Pesty-Bollocks comment, I couldn't resist it ..

 

[mrb2287]

The problem you find with the internet is you have to go and search for what you want to read (hard I know! ) but with a magazine you simply go and purchase and as pestilence said everything was there for you to read, amazng gun battles, event shockers, fall outs etc.

they somehow don't seem to love the sport as we did, leastwise in my opinion.
It's a shame really but it's progress .... ain't it?

Unfortunately so true and so obvious although there are the odd few who still live and breathe paintball to rejuvenate/grow the sport

 

[Robbo]

The problem you find with the internet is you have to go and search for what you want to read (hard I know! ) but with a magazine you simply go and purchase and as pestilence said everything was there for you to read, amazng gun battles, event shockers, fall outs etc.

Unfortunately so true and so obvious although there are the odd few who still live and breathe paintball to rejuvenate/grow the sport

Can we really be that fickle and lazy??
It has to be something more than that ..... but you maybe right, this digital age is predicated on faster and faster access times- just look at how broadband has developed in terms of providing its end user with transfer rates a hundred times what we were used to ... this is driven by people wishing to waste less time on waiting even though the scale of that 'wait' is relatively trivial compared to other 'waits' in our lives.
Maybe we are being sucked into believing we need faster this, and faster that .. and when faster options become available, we take them and the passage of money from our pockets to internet companies is maintained .... or am I just being cynical in my old age?

 

[mrb2287]

Can we really be that fickle and lazy??
It has to be something more than that ..... but you maybe right, this digital age is predicated on faster and faster access times- just look at how broadband has developed in terms of providing its end user with transfer rates a hundred times what we were used to ... this is driven by people wishing to waste less time on waiting even though the scale of that 'wait' is relatively trivial compared to other 'waits' in our lives.
Maybe we are being sucked into believing we need faster this, and faster that .. and when faster options become available, we take them and the passage of money from our pockets to internet companies is maintained .... or am I just being cynical in my old age?

I believe its all down to companies wanting to increase or at least maintain profits/turnover etc by pushing on to us you need faster/better this in your life or lse its not worth having! I remeber having 56k dial up internet as a kid and having to listen to that god-awful noise as it took 5 hours to connect, but i sat there and waited for it to complete its tasks, i didn't sit and get annoyed because i had to wait. If thats you be cynical in your old age then i am already screwed!

 

[Jon S]

Maybe not the best place to ask, but where are people going for their "digital fix" or what have you? I've been out of the game for some time and am surprised at the dearth of websites/blogs out there...I was never a massive fan of PbN but that seems to be very slow now, and other than Baca's blog (which is excellent) I haven't found much else, aside from Social Paintball.

Am I missing a trick, or is it all on Facebook these days?

 

[Tony Harrison]

Yes, you can pick up news items on facebook before they break as news on paintball sites.

 

[MorphMann]

Most teams have there own websites, Fb pages and/or Twitter feeds, but the problem is that you have to look at these at the right moment to read the bits you want to see.

There are a few newsletters set up (TalkPaintball for one), but none of them are the same as the old mags