Cry Wolf, Cheaters in paintball

This was originally written in April of 2005 for a magazine piece. It was not published, and I got permission to repost it in the blogspace.

I'm writing this in a state of being torqued off. In fact, it's a state of being VERY torqued off. I went to go play this weekend, and if I may say so myself I was doing a VERY good job at maintaining the illusion that I know what I'm doing in a paintball game. In spite of my best efforts, I actually did rather well.

What really made me mad was the other team. Let's take something into perspective. Since my back surgery, I haven't been the speediest person on the planet. I'm still working on going from a "brisk walk" to a "spirited trot". So when I make it into a position at the front of the field in the woods, it's because I used every skill of stealth that I have in my arsenal. And after playing this game for a while, I can fake it for accurate shooting, knowing how to dodge paintballs, and in fact how to use cover to the highest degree.

But apparently, my opponents didn't quite see it that way. It wasn't the fact that a few of them kept playing after I shot them that bothered me. It's the fact that they whined at the ref staff so long and hard that "He must be cheating!" that I had my own private referee for several rounds. And he kept on telling the other team "No, he's clean." And "No, you're not hitting him." And even "Yes, he's chronied legal." Or my favorite, "Yes, he's obeying the rules."

Try to understand why this bothers me. I've always looked at the call of "Paint check" as a nice way to call me a possible cheater. "Ref, I shot him and he's not leaving. Go check him and tell the cheater to leave!" It's why I tell people to check themselves, because odds are they won't feel hopper shots and it's a courtesy to let them know that you got them. Naturally, even that's abused. "Check it!" is the call of choice for so many players, that nobody bothers to take it seriously. We may as well be crying "WOLF!" the whole game. Plus I've seen more players abuse the refs with paintchecks. They call out "Check that man behind the tree!" that they really don't know where the opponent is at. So the ref looks, and shows them where the opponent really is.

In this case the ref was trying to tell me that the other team wasn't calling me a cheater. But I fail to see how I misunderstood "Ref, check that man! I shot him! He's playing on! I know I shot him! I could not have missed him!" to mean "Gosh, mister referee sir, he's a nice guy and all but he's not aware I marked him." Perhaps I'm a little weird, but to me hearing an opponent scream obscenities at me because there is no way he could have missed me, and calling me a wiping SOB who'd sell his grandmother to win the game, does not translate in my mind to mean that they don't think I'm cheating.

But let me clue you in on a secret. And this isn't just when you play against me; it's when you play against everyone. It may not be that the other guy is, in fact, cheating. It may not be that he's wiping hits, playing on, shooting out of bounds, shooting hot, or in fact any of the hundreds of other styles of cheating. It may not be that he's doing some kind of referee tampering. It may not be that he's related to the field owner and so gets cut a lot of breaks. And it may not be that he's using an elecro-hybrid-megapaintslinger 5000 that has some kind of ramping technology that gives him some kind of illegal advantage.

No. It may, in fact, be that you suck.

It may be that the other guy is smart enough to know how to use cover better than you. In fact he might be using a few dozen branches in the woods to keep your paintballs at bay. It may be that he can shoot a paintball through a two inch hole, while falling backwards, and hit you on the run. It may be that he's actually skilled enough to longball you at that range that you never thought possible. It might actually be a case in which he knows more tricks than you will ever hope to conceive of and he's using all of them to stay in the game and shoot at you.

And it might, against all odds, be a case in which you don't know any other stunt than pulling the trigger 15 times a second. A lack of knowledge on your part does not constitute cheating on your opponent's part. And it might just be a case in which your opponent has not only done this before, but will continue to do it all day against you specifically to humble you.

So before you start to scream "CHEATER!" when someone plays against you, take a moment to think about it. They actually might be a very experienced player, and they might, in fact, be out playing you. It's not cheating; it's called "Skill". And if you insist on a ref watching him and him alone, consider that you're taking up resources on the field. By forcing a ref to watch one person, that's freeing up another player who may not be as honorable as the one you're demanding be watched like a hawk.

Not everyone cheats, in spite of what you may have heard.

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