Robbo,
I am far from "sitting on my ass" as you would put it. I have just invested several £1,000's of my own money upgrading my site, we run and promote the England v Scotland scenario game twice a year, we are working with Shoreline to deliver the Wedding day masacre scenario game in June, we have launched this year tactical paintball games for hard core milsim fans and are in the process of building a tourney practice field to accomadate tourney players who want somewhere to train.
We have a extensive marketing campaign targeted at schools and youth groups to encourage them to play more paintball, I sponsor a team based at the site, we are sending out press packs to main stream media (papers, radio and TV) to promote the events and the sport and we run a large and well established walk-on scene to help support players who have their own kit (tourney or woods ball).
Nothing would delight me more than if there is an initiative that will let more people play paintball and maximise my profits but for those of us who make a living at this any decision has to be carefully considered and all the options and contingencies evalluated. Not interested in scoring points, simply interested in seeing paintball and my business flourish.
Piper, thanks for the information, its important to have the data behind the product and I look forward to chatting to you at the conference
Actually Steve, I wasn't inferring you were sitting on your ass but there are a lot of people who seem to surface, solely to have a pop at initiatives like this, and they have done absolutely nothing themselves to help paintball.
I can see there is mileage in you adopting a positive approach in trying to help paintball grow not least because you are a site owner but as you may know, my opinion of some site owners isn't that good.
I don't know you, never heard of you, and so cannot comment but I will take your word and believe what you're telling me regarding your intentions of enquiry, until proven otherwise [hopefully not].
A lot of people attacked 50 cal for many different reasons with a lot of those reasons having little to do with genuine enquiry, and so legitimate questions tended to be lost amid vitriolic, and most certainly, unjust attacks, it was a frikkin mess !!!
Pipes was trying to answer some of these questions but ended up being personally abused by idiots; idiots who had nothing better to do than sit by a PC, compensating for the fact they were bashed up at school or the fact their mothers didn't give them enough toys to play with.
In your position as a site owner, you are the ones 50 cal should be focused upon and I am sure somewhere down the line, Richmond will address the problems he faces when trying to launch new product.
There will always be a certain degree of inertia to overcome when endeavouring to get people to abandon the more traditional 68 calibre in favour of this new upstart and eventually, the marketplace will settle down and embrace 50 cal for what it is.
50 cal is essentially a great idea for several reasons and I am sure Piper's address at this year's UKPSF meeting will go a long way to addressing a lot of people's doubts.
But one other thing, this site is not against anybody who has reasonable questions regarding 50 cal, on the other hand, if I believe, things are getting personal, then I will deal with it; this is not bias, it's throwing out the trash ....
Peace!
