TechPB says: Paintball is Dying and you're Killing it

[Lollingsgrad]

Yeah I was thinking that. As someone just starting to take an interest in the sport, I felt justified in bringing this up. I thought it was odd Mike was doing it though. Fortunately I didn't turn tail when this guy was talking about paintball dying as though it was fact. Paintball's an expensive game to get into, I can totally see people like me turning away when they hear stuff like that; after all who wants to invest in a dying game?

 

[goldenelite0]

I think what Mike is saying is that ramping removes restraint from players. He said ramping is ok for tourney ball and for the pros but it would be very disheartening for a new player to be shot up like that on his first day of rec ball. We all know how unnecessary and painful it is to be hit 10 times in the same place. Though that could happen if a player uses semi anyway, ramping makes a it a lot 'easier' to bonus ball. I think Mike is somewhat hypocritical however as I've seen videos of him using burst and full auto modes on his SP1. Surely they are just as bad as ramping? (Note the Blackheart SP1 is 20bps).

Aside from the SP1, if I understand him right then what he means makes a lot of sense. Wether or not it's true, I don't know but I personally think that while ramping doesn't help it's the rate of fire in general that is a problem. I think even semi should be capped as an industry standard but that's my opinion and I am not an academic of the matter.

 

[Timboy]

I'd say it's a fairly often repeated statement, but is it a fact?

How do you measure it? By sales of new equipment? By Attendance? By the number of fields opening or closing? Through the number of stores?

Aye.

Whilst statistics need to be put in context, if you take a look at this link, it shows the search trends for the word 'paintball' in Google.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=paintball&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Clicking on the USA link, from my understanding, the USA shows a 75% drop in the volume of the searches for 'paintball' since it's peak in 2003/2004.

Anyone can read into that whatever they want, but it's not a positive statistic and broadly reflects the sort of decline in market size that some of the manufacturers have anecdotally referred to in recent months. Also, some of the Big Game events in the US have seen a slump in player attendances, some down around 40% on a couple of years ago.

I've no doubt that some of it is due to the wider economic situation, but it would be myopic to just put it down to that.

Having said all that, as Vic Reeves once said, 98% of all statistic are made up.