airsoft pisses on paintball

[Baca Loco]

Robo's busy so it's my turn to poke the Tyger

Originally posted by Tyger
Umm... Moo man?

A--1) Anything that might resemble woods to you is usually swamp, and impossible to move through without fighting off alligators.

B--2) Anyone who plays in the daytime gets their brain fried out by the heat. So you play at night, so you play under lights, so you play in an arena field.

C--Besides, explain Waynes World in Ocala? Or Paintball World near Kissimee? Woods aint dead yet.

D--But I still don't think that Airsoft has a place in PGI.

-Tyger

A--completely stereotyped and inaccurate assessment. When I started playing the great majority of Fl fields were all or mostly woods fields just like everywhere else back in the day. You see lots more gators on golf courses than you do on paintball fields.
B--everyone plays in the daytime year round though there is a wussy minority that doesn't play much in July or August. Most fields are not open at night nor do they use lights.
C--Wayne uses his place for his scenario games and all the fields I'm familiar with within an hour of his place are different. Real question is what sort of walk-on day numbers does he get compared to the old days. Paintball World hasn't been in the old location for more than two years. It's just off the interstate now a mile or two from Universal Studios theme park.
D--and yet we agree.

 

[John Molloy]

Robo's busy so it's my turn to poke the Tyger

Originally posted by Baca Loco


D--and yet we agree.

Seems to me that a lot of us agree on this

 

[rancid]

Re: who wants a heated debate?

Usup, I'm not intending to dig you out here, but if I can take your post as representative... in answer to my question why should pgi be responsible for paintball's image...

Originally posted by upsupball


because at the moment there are only a few people loking out for paintballs image and trying to improve that image; PGI, UKPSF and occasionally players when they talk to people about paintball.......if pgi were to start putting adverts or articles for air soft, people may have been reading a pgi from somewhere to see what it is all about cause people say that paintball is not a war game, and when they read it they see an air soft stuff. they then link paintball and air soft together and come to the conclusion that paintball is a war game.

Fair enough, but for the sake of furthering the discussion one or two postings more.... If the publisher of pgi included Airsoft straight away the profitability of that mag may increase by £250,000 a year for the next 10 years. And you know what, I don't think it'd make a blind bit of difference to how paintball is regarded.... cos the people who think it's for mentallists now will never be convinced. So, I'll reword my question to you Usup... no I wont, I'll repeat it: 'why the f should pgi be responsible for paintball's image?' C'mon... there is a reason out there, but I'm not accepting 'because it should'.

Right, point two. My old favourite. We still have this fear of wargames, why?

Give me a serious, well thought thru argument that is not based on petty prejudice and fantasy thoughts about Olympic games and prime time tv.

Just to make my argument clear... if it wasn't for its 'wargame' image, paintball would be dead in the uk in 12 months.

That's bollox?

Ask Niall Squires, the guy putting on the best tourny in the country, what he'd rather have. 30,000 people thru his site in the first four months of this year vs 500 tourny players in the f in country. 30,000 people asking to use the machine gun, where the grenades are at, how to storm the embassy... and all this so you can play 20mins worth of ball at Crystal palace and he can drive round in a nice new Merc, yet if pgi did that we'd be lynched!

I say again, no wargame, no paintball.

How's that?

 

[Subterfuge]

Heh everytime I talk about paintball on a highly mutiplayer online game they always say "airsoft rules". It's mostly the brits who say that though. As for florida being to "hot" to play outdoors in, I am immune to fireants now. Most the time when I play in the summer I come back from the field with my t-shirt soaked in sweat( you can literally wring it out); however, I always have a great experience everytime I play.

 

[Buddha 3]

I'm gonna get flamed fo saying this, but....

Rancid, I agree.
Despite the fact that us tourney players try to appear as least militaristic as we can, the predominant image people have, and always will have of paintball, is that of a wargame. We can say 'No, look at this, we play in colourfull jerseys, and hide behind funny inflatable things!', and the avarage guy you say this to will probably respond by nodding his head, and mumbling 'Oh, I see...'. But in reality his mind will be saying 'Screw that, I see guns, so they're playing war!'.
Hell, the game Stratego is about war, and it involves capturing the flag. So does our game....
And besides that, 99.99% of us played for the first time, with the thought of a grown up game of soldiers in the back of our minds.

 

[Hotpoint]

Well I don't think telling the truth is a flameable offence Buddha 3 but I do think you've shifted off-topic. It's not so much that the majority think we're wargame playing fanatics that's the problem it's the fact that unless we go out of our way to disprove it the majority will ALWAYS think we're wargame playing fanatics

As for your question Rancid the fear of being associated with wargames is that as long as it continues we will never have a hope in hell of going mainstream nor reaching our full economic potential

There will always be an element who play in the woods pretending to be Rambo and that will always generate a steady income for site owners and the industry but unless the more serious Paintballing fraternity disassociate themselves from this then the days of major sponsorship and television coveridge will never arrive

I have seen estimates that Paintball in the UK is worth perhaps £10-15 Million per year. This is absolute chicken-feed compared with mainstream sports

I can't tell if we ever will really move into the big time but the rewards if we do are astronomical and swamp the short-term gains of integrating AirSoft into our lives

Our problem is our Image. Remove that and we're an extreme sport which is enjoyed by the vast majority of people from all walks of life who participate in it... the skys the limit for an activity like that, especially one in which there is a place for people who are not super-atheletic (ie at the back) and one in which males and females compete on equal terms.

 

[rancid]

Originally posted by Hotpoint
unless we go out of our way to disprove it the majority will ALWAYS think we're wargame playing fanatics......
the fear of being associated with wargames is that as long as it continues we will never have a hope in hell of going mainstream nor reaching our full economic potential


But, the vast majority of money generated is by people playing war! They want to play war! They don't see out wrong with it. THIS is our economic potential, not 500 wannabee stars hiding behind a blow up doll, with fingers crossed they may get ten minutes on the extreme channel or whatever it's called!

What was the singular most popular marketing push of last year.... Mission Paintball. A tiny hint to tourny, but joe public saw that and thought yowser, that looks like fun. Every site in the country benefitted massively: Doug Setters couldn't cram them all in; Niall had to get new trucks to bring em in from the train station. To make paintball mainstream we have to have more players. the question is, do we get more players by showing ten minutes on cable of young, fit, elite, sportsmen hiding behind plastic bottles and shooting 13 balls a second that NO ONE can see... or do we see a fat middle aged bloke, with his son, the colleage from his work and a bunch of exec women making an assault on a log cabin where we can see every ball, are familiar with the rudiments (battle) and are not alientated cos we're a bit overweight and not very sporting.

It's common sense!

And Jon, this isn't steady income.... it IS the income. But... we're only just scratching the surface. promote paintball at grass roots as wargame and paintball will grow bigger. Hide this, turn the other cheeks and you are robbing paintball of its major USP.

'Our problem is our Image' . Remove that and we're an extreme sport which is not attractive to the vast majority of people from all walks of life...

I can't tell if we ever will really move into the big time but the rewards if we do are astronomical and swamp the short-term gains of integrating AirSoft into our lives

Yeah, but what about my short term benefits? I could have a new merc, new house, new cardi... anything. Why should pgi be responsible, when every other bugger is coining it in from the wargame market?

 

[Munkeh]

Errmm... why doesn't the publishers of PGi just produce a "sister" mag for airsoft? Would that not make every1 happy?

 

[rancid]

Cos airsoft's ****.

 

[Hotpoint]

Originally posted by rancid

But, the vast majority of money generated is by people playing war! They want to play war! They don't see out wrong with it. THIS is our economic potential

And Jon, this isn't steady income.... it IS the income. But... we're only just scratching the surface. promote paintball at grass roots as wargame and paintball will grow bigger. Hide this, turn the other cheeks and you are robbing paintball of its major USP.

Yeah, but what about my short term benefits? I could have a new merc, new house, new cardi... anything. Why should pgi be responsible, when every other bugger is coining it in from the wargame market?

[/B]

This is not so much our economic potential as our economic reality Rancid. Moreover it is an economic reality which is very much pushing the limits of its own potential. I sincerely doubt if we will ever get a much bigger number of wargame enthusiasts involved than we do now because as a percentage of the countries population they are a distinctly limited group

Our economic potential is to get the vast majority of people who aren't interested in playing war interested in playing paintball. I would not advocate killing off RecBall (for a start I find it fun myself) but I would contend that in its potential Tourney can be far bigger in terms of numbers of players and very much bigger in terms of revenue

As for your own short-term benefits... how many cardigans can one man usefully own anyway, or are you to cardies what Imelda Marcos is to shoes?