Community building

I know that someone will accuse me of picking on a specific group here, but it's not just them. This is something I've seen in a lot of places, but last night I wanted to test it.

Last night I started a thread over on Spec Ops asking people what their long term paintball goals were. In a way I understand it's a loaded question. I'm asking individuals what they want to do in a sport or hobby they enjoy.

Responses were pretty typical. A lot of people wanted to play all over the place. Some wanted to achieve sponsorship. Some wanted to do great things. Some wanted to build fields that were really cool. But there was a recurring theme. All the goals were for themselves. All about things they wanted to do.

"So what?" What I wanted to see is if anyone was interested in building a community. Before you click "back" let me explain. When I asked people about what they wanted to do, I had in mind what I set out to do when I began the WDR shows. One of my goals was to give back to the paintball community, put some information back into the pool that players could benefit from.

This isn't as uncommon as you might think. Many athletes in other sports want to give back to the community they live in, or the community of players in their sport. Some do it with charity fundraisers, using their celebrity to attract money for their cause. Some do it by donating time and money out of their own pockets to build and restore fields for kids to play at. Some do it by selling videos with their techniques on it, but that's more about making a little more money than building a community.

So when I talk about a paintball community, I'm talking about making the player base stronger. I'm talking about a direction for paintball to travel as a whole. I've been told that I'm fragmenting the sport with stuff like the "Woodsball Manifesto" and the "Bashing of tourney players". I don't bash people for playing tournaments; I bash them for being idiots. I'm an equal opportunity bastard like that.

The problem is that tournament paintball is going one way, and separating itself from the remainder of paintball. What you have is a segment of players claiming in words they're part of a larger community of paintball players, when in reality they want nothing to do with the majority of people in the community. This isn't my doing; I'm not the almighty here. This is what they genuinely want.

Add to that my question from earlier, and the responses. What you get is a collection of people who are, for lack of a better term, selfish. And I can't blame them, as paintball is very much geared for individuals. The ultimate irony, paintball is a team sport where a group of individuals play together and try to gain rewards for themselves. But when I asked people what they wanted as a long term goal for themselves in paintball, everyone wanted something for them, and only them.

"I want this gun" or "I want to play in this game". Nobody said anything about "I have a goal to teach some new guys how to play" or "I want to help run a charity game to help both an organization and paintball." There were a few responses about introducing new people to paintball, but mostly it was people wanting things for themselves. But that's what paintball is geared towards. We aren't as much a community as much as we're just a bunch of people that "hang out" together and want to get stuff from the "bottomless pit". But it's not bottomless, the energy and the effort to make it work has to come from somewhere.

Community building isn't just taking things from the game; it's putting effort back into the game. It's not just saying "I want to get sponsored and get free stuff", it's hosting a clinic at your local field to help teach kids to play right. It's not saying "I want to travel to these events", it's helping your local field owner organize an event that people will want to come to. It's not always about you; it's about making the whole game better by giving your time or effort to make things better.

There are some groups that do this, some scenario teams have programs where they teach a kid the basics of scenario play ("Ranger for a day" and the "1st MG Mini Merc" programs comes to mind) But beyond that, who does it? I know that tournament teams certainly don't, for the most part. I think one tournament team had a contest to be part of their "pit crew" for a weekend, but that's more gimmick than giving.

So take a little time, think about what long term goals you have for your paintball game. It's as much yours as it is mine and anyone else's. It's up to all of us to take care of it, and make it better. If you keep taking water from a lake, eventually it becomes nothing more than a hole. You have to put water back in to make it thrive. That's how you build a community. What you get out of it depends a lot on what you're willing to put into it.