Selling Out the paintball community

This weekend I'll be going up to Factory PB for some indoor action. Pump guns only, should make good footage. I went to the website to find directions, and I found this :

Tuesday, November 29th, 2005!
Top Gun Tournament at Factory Painball Arena 6 p.m.
$50, Plus Paint
Limited to first 16 paind Registrants
Registration untill 6 p.m.
One on One play Best of Seven / Single Elimination
Winner gets complimentary entry into Top Gun Regionals ($200 value)
Top Gun Regional Winners go to National Championships in Las Vegas for Televised Event
National Prize: New Car!*
Call Now (847-473-2400)
Register on our factorypb.com to receive e-mail updates and other specials

*Terms and prizes subject to change and provided by UAPL

I tried to call them, but got a machine. There is a link as well, but it goes to a promo video from UAPL/WPL. I even went to the UAPL Website but they had no information on the event.

So what's to bother me? Well, first is the format. 1 on 1 isn't really about who's the better player. Often times, it's who's luckiest or who keeps moving. There are no mentioning of the rules of the event (nor any links, which bothers me) so it's probably unlimited paint format. Which means that there's only skill in shooting being displayed, and not skill in playing. Oh, and the ability to scream and intimidate refs into overturning "who shot who first" calls.

Second is the basics told on the site. 16 player limit. Fine, that's cool. $50 entry, ok, that's cool too. "SINGLE ELIMINATION FORMAT". I can't tell if the "Best of 7" part means that they will be putting people into two groups of 8 for a "round robin" format, or what. It just bugs me when they don't provide any more information than the absolute basics. I want to know the rules, I want to know the format, I want to know why I should spent $50 for a 1 on 1 event?

Then there's the regionals / nationals. I'd kinda like to know where those are going to be held, because frankly I need to know how I'm going to get there. Unless a part of the prize is to fly out to Vegas for the "Nationals", that's money out of MY pocket to get there for no guarantee of anything. Even the prize is "subject to change"! They could give me a "Toy YODA" and say the prize was subject to change. Which brings me to one more thing.

And finally, the prize of a "new car". You know, a long time ago there was a small event called the "Spyder Cup". The winning team received 5 "new cars". Mustangs, to be specific. What the tournament hype didn't mention is that the 5 cars were yours for a YEAR, on a lease. The winning team didn't KEEP the cars. It was one of the details that was hidden until you pressed the issue and REALLY dove deep into the specifics.

I feel like this "carrot" is about as deceptive. As I said, there's NO information about this on the UAPL site. In fact, there's no information about this high-prize tournament format ANYWHERE. Even on Warpig, I only found a 9 month old article on it, including this :

Those who prefer to proclaim the sportsmanship found in paintball may be less than pleased by the show's candor when discussing wiping and cheating. While not outright saying that they cheat, players interviewed on the show allude to the fact that hits can disappear. "“I did not cheat. All the paint on the side of my face and over here.. It was like a figment of your imagination. It didn't happen, there was nothing here" said Greg "Red" Hastings while making wiping motions with his hands in the show's first episode. (Milt) Call commented, "They asked me what to show and what not to show. I said to show the truth."

With a comment like that, I think I can guess about the quality of officiating, and the sportsmanship of the players being encouraged. It may just be they're not flinching at the truth, or it may be that they're aiming for a "WWE" approach to TV "Sports Entertainment".

So, let me think... $50 to win a shot at a place in a tournament where the rules aren't published, the players admit to cheating on camera, and the powers that be only tell the truth and not punish the guilty? Oh yeah, and the $50 doesn't include the paint I'd have to buy to play in the tournament. But the more I look at this 1-on-1 event, and how this "professional" tournament is being run so ripshod, the more it makes me question the entire UAPL company / tournament series.

Something tells me this is yet another attempt at making paintball a "Cash cow", and not a sport. A lot of people would just say "If you don't like it, don't play in it." I'm not playing in it. Not because I don't think I'd do well, I could probably beat the tar out of most people 1-on-1 with unlimited paint. But I think I "get" what the "UAPL" system is doing.

I guess it just bothers me when I see people put paintball on TV, but it's not the sport I play. It's what they know will make them money. And that's short "Mtv cuts" and character snippets, constant changing action, and glorify the cheaters. It's not about the sport, it's about the characters in the sport. It's also about making the money over making a community. I think that bothers me the most.

8-9 years ago I said that for $250,000 I could put paintball on TV in a format people would love. 3 on 3, centerflag, and WWE it out. Make the players "characters", make good and evil teams, and then have backstage stuff going on. I said at the time I wouldn't do it, because I had too much respect for the game. Apparently, not everyone does.

From the Warpig article, May '05 :

(Duke) Ellinger is no stranger to shooting and producing paintball, having captured the 2002 Nation’s Cup X-Ball tournament on video for his cablecast show Adrenaline TV. He now serves as president of Paintball Television Productions, and described the new TV show in a television production industry testimonial… "Imagine the WWE meets Adrenaline TV meets Arena Paintball: it's going to be off the hook!"

And if Milt Call wants to debate me on this, guest posting is still allowed on this forum.

Branding Paintball (PG-13)

This post has offensive language. Deal.

I've said it before, but beginning this piece by saying it again will definitely set the stage here. Paintball, as a "sport", is a joke. With that as the working premise, we continue. So why is paintball a joke? Well, this week we'll talk about the clothing issues.

Tournament players are long known for their cheating ways. It used to be they at least had the common courtesy to try to hide the fact that they cheated like bastards to win tournaments or just flat our denied that they did so. Hell, $10,000 to buy a tournament wasn't unheard of, just unspoken. Don't cringe, the team that did it used that victory to sell upwards of $500,000 in barrels and accessories. Now, it's part of the glory of tournament players. Didn't the X-Box paintball game have a "cheat bar" on it, so you could cheat in the video game? It's part of the mystique of the game. It's part of paintball's image.

Right there, you should be able to tell where I'm going with this. Tournament paintball as a sport is a joke. However, as a business it's a pretty good marketing scheme. Let's play a little game called "Follow the Money". And, for the fact that they want to be the best known, let's talk PSP and X-ball, shall we? Good.

X-Ball / PSP are basically an extension of NPS. Take a look at the X-Ball photos. You see a LOT of branding opportunities for the paint, guns, safety gear air tanks and clothing they sell. Just out of curiosity, when was the last time any pro X-ball team wore JT goggles? I don't think I can find ANY. Why? JT is owned by Brass Eagle, and BE is competing directly with NPS for market share. So what better way to advertise your product than exclude other companies from being in your show?

So when you look at X-Ball, you see a lot of branding for "Empire" clothing. They've even made poster children out of their so-called superstars like Lasoya. Wonderful ad campaign, get some of the best known cheaters and confirmed sadists to wear your clothing, take pictures of the guys throwing gang signs and plaster it on every other page of a magazine. Oh, that's right; nobody wants to talk about the kid Lasoya lit up when his custom-tuned electronic paintgun "ran away" from him. If my memory is correct he said he wasn't sure how many times the gun discharged into the kid's body at point blank range. Nice role model. And by the way I call "bullshit".

Then comes the slick part. X-Ball is covered in Paintball 2Xtremes Magazine, Paintball Sports, and a few other rags on the market. PB2X was bought out by Gino Posterivo, or someone attached to Gino financially, from Mike and John Henry. The Henrys were basically bought out to shut them up, as they were doing more harm than good for the sport. Good purchase. Now NPS, which is owned by Gino, has a media arm. Should I also mention that Jerry Braun, chief editor at Paintball Sports, is ALSO the "assistant coach" of "New York Xtreme"? NYX is a franchise of the NXL.

"Mr. Kane? Line 1. It's the election staff."

This isn't to mention ads taken out in all the magazines, which also covers X-Ball. So you get the "GI-Joe Effect". You have coverage of an event along side ads for products being sold by those who run the event. Or, basically, you spend money to buy an infomercial magazine. No different than the old 30 minute infomercials for "He-Man" and "GI-Joe" where they'd have commercials for the action figures for the show you were watching. Except in this case, it's legal because nobody has called them on it.

How's that for slick?

And the whole time you see these guys doing their thing, and thinking "Wow! I gotta buy me a pair of those $125 Empire pants!" Congrats, you've been "branded". "Branding" is a term for associating a name or symbol in people's minds with more than just a product. If I say "I want a Coke" to almost anyone in the civilized world, they know exactly what I want and why. I may not get a "Coca-Cola" product, but odds are I'll get a cola of some kind. I can also say I drive a "Ferrari" too, and in your mind you know what that is. Same goes for McDonalds, Starbucks and Hello Kitty. I say the name, you know what it is. And odds are you have an emotion tied to the product as well. That's the core of "branding". Getting you to feel good about a product, so when you ask for a Coke, you feel good about what you're about to get.

So what we've got is a marketing ploy. In this case, the "branding" of paintball is meant to make the end buyer (you) feel more like an "extreme athlete" or a "winning paintball athlete". They run a tournament, they showcase the products there, and in the magazines, and the winning team is guaranteed to be wearing / shooting / using their product. Their product is now associated with winning, because no other brand name is even being USED by any of the teams. It's hard to not win without using their product, as it's the only one available. So when the kids want the products the pros use, they go with what they see the winning teams use. And, as a side effect, the name of that product is associated with winning paintball games. Funny how that works, isn't it?

And for a moment, let's talk about that gear. Still picking on the NXL and PSP, who sponsors those series? Draxxus, Dye and Smart Parts according to the web page. But it's pretty clear National Paintball Supply has a money interest in X-Ball. Under those four companies, you have the brand names of DYE, Renegade, Draxxus, Empire, Proto and a few others. I'm sticking to clothing here, so bear with me.

Let's talk about rules. The NXL rulebook does NOT say "Players may not wear padded clothing". It says they may not wear OVERSIZED clothing, but nothing about padding. Rule 5.2.4 DOES say that players may wear padding, as long as it is not "modified from the manufacturer's original form." It also says they may not wear rubberized layers, but nothing about padding. And, who do you suppose wrote these rules? Well damned if I know because there's no paper trail for a rules committee or in fact any corporate structure for X-Ball. I can find the executives for Major League Baseball in TWO CLICKS of a mouse from their main page. Paintball, however, cloaks itself so you can't follow the trail easily.

But I think I have it down. See, the people who write the rules have always been the players. In paintball, the players themselves have always written the rules, modified the rules, enforced the rules, and otherwise made the sport work. In the beginning, the players were also the promoters too. Guess what. Paintball hasn't evolved far past that now. The "Professional Referees" we've been promised for 15+ years? WHERE ARE THEY?!?!?!? I don't see any unaffiliated group of referees anywhere. Ok, "Lords of Discipline", but that's the only one I can think of. And even then, do they ref X-Ball?

So back to the point. The players originally made the rules. Now those players run parts of the industry, and some of them still play in the league they help promote and run. Players who want every advantage they can get. And for what it's worth, the people in the manufacturing industry want to see gear move off the shelves, so if they have a say in the rules committee they will not hesitate in tweaking rules to fit what they manufacture. So seeing as the rules do not prohibit things like excessive padding, you get padding out the wazoo; and a little bit in the wazoo too.

I mean have you SEEN the Empire '06 jersey? Padding on the stomach, the chest, all along the arms and wrist and shoulders. And the pants? They pad every part of the body as well. Then pile on that their baseball hats with the padding, the 3-4 layers of head wraps and bandanas they wear OVER that... What's the point of playing anymore? When you shoot someone point blank, and the balls simply fall off them, why am I wasting my time and money? If it was only in the X-Ball world, fine. But you know what? I know right after Christmas all the "Credit Card Kiddies" will have these jerseys, pants and head wraps because "ITS THE AGG SHIZNET!!!!"

And it's all 100% legal too! Why? Well who writes the rules? Who runs the league? Who allows this to happen? Here's a big hint. Follow the money. Who stands to gain the most selling the jerseys, pants, paintballs and paintguns that the pros use?

I think you can figure that out.

So to bring it back to the beginning, paintball as a sport is a joke. The tournament scene exists for one sole purpose, to sell product. Not for competition, not for athleticism, but for monetary gain of those who run the events. When you stand back and look at it, paintball is a very large marketing ploy. Companies put out the concepts that their gear is used by the best of the best, and you can be part of the "xtreme sport" if you wear their products. Players are buying the "branding" that they are athletes in an extreme sport of paintball, and that hype is being used to sell more products. And they're not selling the actual product as much as they're selling the concept that paintball is a sport, and true paintball athletes ONLY wear their gear.

The joke is that it's all marketing. I really don't believe they give a rat's ass about the players other than how full their wallets are. The fact that a team had to assault the referees to get noticed at World Cup is the proof of that. And here's the ultimate joke, paintball players bought the "branding" hype.

As a community, we bought into the idea that we can't be a hardcore player without the colorful padded jerseys and pants, or the 15 BPS guns, or the 3-4 headbands and "emo" sweat bands on our wrists. We bought into the ideas that good players always shoot 300-800 balls a game, and that it's "xtreme" to randomly throw paint downrange and play twitchball for an entire game. The final indignity? As long as a team or a player wants to climb to the top of a hollow mountain, we will continue to buy into the hype.

Sad, isn't it?

"Intelligent Design"

A while ago I posted about "Intelligent Design", because it was a funny piece of writing. Apparently, it's a bigger deal than I thought. I found this bit of news on MSNBC. What's funny is that of all the arguments I've had on a PAINTBALL forum about this, I'm once again proven right. And after this post, we will return to our regularly scheduled paintball posts.

AP : Nov. 3, 2005 VATICAN CITY - A Vatican cardinal said Thursday that the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the “mutual prejudice” between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s 1992 declaration that the church’s 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from “tragic mutual incomprehension.” Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus’ discovery that the earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

“The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future,” Poupard said.

But he said science, too, should listen to religion.

“We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: The atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link,” he said.

“But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism,” he said. “The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity.”

Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate raging in the United States over evolution and “intelligent design.”

Intelligent design’s supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”

“A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false,” he said. “(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof.”

He was asked about comments made in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who dismissed in a New York Times article the 1996 statement by John Paul as “rather vague and unimportant” and seemed to back intelligent design.

Basti concurred that John Paul’s 1996 letter “is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view,” but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.

Poupard, for his part, stressed that what was important was that “the universe wasn’t made by itself, but has a creator.” But he added, “It’s important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better.”

The Vatican project STOQ has organized academic courses and conferences on the relationship between science and religion and is hosting its first international conference on “the infinity in science, philosophy and theology,” next week.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Team assaults refs at World Cup?

I'm willing to understand that this is all hearsay and rumor. But... ya know... This is the kind of crap that I was talking about MONTHS ago when I said someone's gonna get killed in this game.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a few links.

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=185962

http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=1251186&page=1&pp=21

The "short" version of the story is team "Psycho Circus" decided they were fed up with the referees at the World Cup. Instead of taking their grievances to a higher authority, or following channels, they decided to take matters into their own hands. They played their last game by shooting at the referees. Reports have more than one member RELOADING to shoot the referees more.

Reports on Automags.Org have that two players are "banned for life from PSP and Disney property, and the rest of the team banned for 1 year. Police fined them for trespassing and booted them off the property. "

If anyone doesn't believe me that the culture of paintball is flawed, I now present you proof.

Yes, they were punished. And yes, they were banned and arrested. However, let's look at the actions. Instead of going to complain to a head ref, or to the event organizer, or presenting a formal complaint to the PSP president, they took the law into their own hands and attacked referees. Now let's say that a basketball player... ok bad example. Let's say a football player didn't like a call from an umpire, and on the next play ran right at them and crushed them into the ground. Do you really think they'd only get a year's suspension from the league?

And if a player's ONLY course of action is to attack referees, what does that say about the chain of command of the league? What it tells me is that the PSP promoters and staff are in their ivory towers watching the players, not caring what really happens. I've TRIED to talk to head refs at events, and they're ultimately untouchable. Event organizers are even harder to chase down. Yes, they're doing other things and they're busy. But there's no way a team can take an on-field grievance to a higher authority.

I play a game, and a referee pulls my whole team on a 4-for-1 because I looked at him and said "What?" So where do I go to complain? The head ref of the field? "I was over there, I didn't see it." Ultimate ref? "Sorry to hear that, I have more important things to do." Then who?

Remember the "Rocky" video? The one where he threatened to pull his team and boycott the league because of a bad call? The fact he did that, and EXPECTED the call to be overturned tells me that he had no other recourse. In his mind, he had to threaten the league (with an empty threat, it turns out) with monetary punishment if the call wasn't overturned. And guess what? There was no other recourse of action for him to take. Event over, and event basically forgotten.

Paintball is a joke, as far as other sports go. We're small time wanting to be prime time. The fact is that there's no real course of action that a player can take a grievance. So Psycho Circus has to take out their frustration by attacking the referees. So Rocky Knuth has to threaten to pull money out of the NXL. So players have to carry the mentality of "us vs. them" when they play. Not "us vs. the other team", but "us vs. the refs / authority".

I should probably add this, for completion sake. The other problem is that immature behavior is still rewarded in paintball. If you throw a loud and long hissy fit, and have enough power to back it up, you get your way! And many teams don't have the sponsor power to get away with this, but they'll throw hissy fits anyway. I've seen many players in local tournaments all but throw punches at each other over plastic trophies. And why? Because nobody in paintball can act mature enough!

No, wait, that's not true. Bob Long back in '94, when the Ironmen were beaten by the All Americans on ESPN's event. Bill Gardner is throwing a tantrum about how he "had the (first) pull" even though he didn't technically break the plane of the flag station. He was ultimately right, as the judge who made the call on the field was brought over to confirm it. Long actually took it in stride. "Well, everyone bitches about losing, well we just lost. The only thing bad about it is they stopped the flag runner coming back, and I don't think that was quite fair." THAT'S maturity. No ranting, no whining. He had a legitimate complaint, but he didn't throw a tantrum about it.

(Video available over on the Webdog site It's the ESPN 1995 Video.)

But let's look at his background as an "Old School" player. He played football for MANY years, defensive. Anyone who's played football will tell you that they do instill some sense of resonsibility and maturity in the players who play. You may not always SEE it in some players, but the attempt is made to do this.

Paintball has no sense of maturity. In fact, immature players and actions are rewarded with sponsorship, magazine time, and other rewards. And a lot of the new players see this, and emulate it. "Monkey see, monkey do." Then it's pushed a little further every time.

Proof? Jeremy Salm. Went into the woods at the World Cup, and plinked at people on the other team to help his own team win. When he was found he was banned for a year, and his team pulled out of the event. This was a few years ago. Now we have Psycho Circus attacking the refs. And the joke is that they don't feel bad about it! In fact, they feel justified. From PB Nation :

From "Iceman91"

OK first off lets get it from someone who was on the field....
First PSP SUCKS worst reffing ever.
Second we got hosed twice on that field by refs wipping and letting the other teams play on and then having a ref on that field and people on the sidelines say damn you got srewed.
So ya we did shoot the shat out of the Fat Azz ref that did tell us that and said he was gonna do something about it and never did.
Yes we got banned from Disney and PSP for life. We only did it b/c of that FAT Bastard and it was our last game, and we played Zombie ball (i bunkered each played on the field then left the field, others did some TACTICAL RETREATS).
<("<) What team do you play for???? B/C I dont remeber loosen a game like that B4....
I might be able to get a video clup of this moment when I get back home for you all to see.

It's going to take some kid getting killed, or damn near killed, before these players are sufficiently punished with something that sticks. It's going to take something drastic before the league cracks down, the sponsors realize that they can't just reward and glorify immature idiots and the players are forced to start acting like the athletes they're supposed to be.

How do we start? Like every other revolution. You start in your own mind. Get your team together, make some effort to handle games and events with some maturity and respect. If you have a grievance, you take it through channels. If you exhaust your channels, you let it go for that event. Yes, if you get burned you have the right to be mad. But don't take your anger out on others.

If the reffing is biased, and the field owner won't help you, and even if the ultimate judge is being paid off by the other team to throw the game, you don't take it out on the field. Worst case scenario, walk. Cut your losses, explain why you're leaving, then take your money elsewhere. And if you lose legitimately, don't blame anyone else. You lost, it happens. You learn, you get better. You make excuses, you never improve.

Paintball is already like the WWE. How about we start to take OURSELVES seriously. Then perhaps other companies will too.