Re: Perception is reality
Originally posted by rancid
Hey great, we're still going.
Rancid--just because you still live in a hobbit hole in some nondescript hedgerow doesn't mean the rest of the world does too.Originally posted by Baca Loco
My point is simple. The existing player base was in large part introduced to the game as a war-type game (and apparently in the UK still is.) If they had been introduced from the beginning of their experience to a tourney-type game we would not be having this discussion.
A--No, we wouldn't - because there would be no such thing as paintball. ie tournament paintball is not the panacea many would have us believe - it is alienating, it is elitist, it is competitive and it is therefore less attractive and limited.
B--That's a bit bolshy of me, cos I must say that I'm out the loop editorially these days, and my knowledge of grassroots US paintball isn't what it should be.
And that is what is beginning to happen over here. The tourney scene is big enough, the numbers of tourney players pervasive enough, the marketing of all of paintball uses the tourney focus to promote their products. Consequently what is beginning to happen is new players are exposed from the beginning to a non-wargame scenario focused game and coming into the game with a slowly changing perception of what paintball is and what they want to play.
C--You've posted a few times recently to this effect....but I'd like to push you on evidence. When you say the players are forcing change where? how? why? and what makes them right? Who are these pioneers?
D--Maybe this can really work in the US, and ten minutes of TV supair will bring more people to the sites that ten minutes of TV 'storm the castle', I don't know. But my gut feeling is that this is all Emperor's New Clothes, and it will prove to be nothing more than an expensive glitch. And in ten years when we're still talking about tv tomorrow, we'll look behind us to find the grass roots has diminished, and the sites have disappeared, and the paint production has polarised, and you're back to having a choice of two guns and they're both sold by the same company.
And, I'll still be driving an old banger...with Hotpoint in the boot.
A--at one level yes but just like kids play baseball, basketball and football it is both like and unlike the highest levels of competition and there's no reason paintball can't and won't end up somewhat similarly. (Tho there will probably always be some segment that prefers Big Games and woods-style ball and so what.)
B--SEE hobbit hole remark.
C--Obviously I can speak with the most authority about Florida so that's my frame of reference. So, in order, Florida, with their playing dollars, because they want to play the game they read about in the magazines and other players talk about, right and wrong have nothing to do with it, the active, established player base and the young players coming into the game with NO PRECONCEPTIONS.
D--the glass is half full.
Hotpoint--it's a matter of degree and our government hasn't yet reached the critical mass of central authority bureaucrats whereas the EU is nothing but self-aggrandizing, we-know-better-than you-do-what's-good-for-you apparatchiks who think nationalism and it's vestiges of patriotism are part and parcel of Europe's problems and must be stamped out.
American Civil War--people willing to fight for what they believed in. Chamberlain and appeasement in the face of anchluss. Mmmm?
