"Blood Red Paint" revisited

this post is mirrored from one I made on the Special Ops Paintball forum. The question was asked if red paint was considered ok. A lot of replies were, for lack of a better term, laissez-faire. "I don't care" Or that it made the game more "realistic" and was cool. This is my public response.

*turns on "Dead Kennedys" CD*

You know what? I've argued against this, I've written an article that was published in APG some time ago. And you know what? It dawns on me that, for the most part, nobody in paintball seems to give a rats tail about what anyone outside of the game thinks about it.

So I would like to make a proposal here. Let's just go all out. Pull out the stops and make paintball so close to the "real thing" that calling it a simulation would be doing it a disservice. Let's bring back the "Wolf's Lair" style of play where paintball is a completely immersive experience. Why not bring back the old catchphrase of calling paintball the "Friendly wargame", but let's put a 21st century turn on it. I mean it's no different than playing some of the more violent video games now, except this is realer than real.

First of all let's all use blood red paint. That'd be cool, right? Even better we can buy paint based on our owd blood type! "A" being like whitebox, "B" being like a low end rec-ball, "AB" is like your high end, and "O" being like your high-grade tourneyball. Let's embrace the whole "We're killing each other" mentality. Heck, let's even make a "paint knife" we can mount with a bayonet lug on the barrel too. It could even be removable for throat slashes when you get close to an enemy.

Next, we'll all use the same guns we have now. No need in making everyone buy a replica gun, right? But in 2-3 years we'll make it necessary to use an upgrade body kit to make your marker look more like an M-16, H&K of your choice, or any given machine gun. We'll still let you shoot all the paint you want, unlike real firearms which would MELT if they were shot as hard as a paintgun. I mean this is all "fantasy", right?

Everyone must wear BDU's. No jerseys allowed. You can wear replica WW1, WW2, Korean or Vietnam uniforms if you want, but no pullover, jerseys, jumpsuits (unless you're a pilot). There are exceptions. If you're chosen persona is a guerrilla fighter, you may wear jeans and a t-shirt. You can also wear specific clothing associated with other ethnicities of war-torn areas as long as you can prove it with a photograph from a major news source.

When you arrive, you will have a name card printed out with your chosen persona, and you will be expected to have dog-tags made within a month to replace it. If the field is on the ball, they'll have an embossing machine on site. Nobody will use barrel plugs or socks, as they don't look "realistic" in the staging area. So if a gun goes off and hits someone in the face, so be it. Stupid things happen in "basic" all the time. You may wear goggles and mask, but only if the mask has been modified to look like something militaristic. This is, naturally, a judgment call from the management. Otherwise, goggles only is preferred. Face paint optional, but recommended. Teams will be chosen based on what people are wearing. If you look "American" you go over there, if you look like (insert racial slur of the week) you go over there.

Then when you play, a few special rules apply. There is no point blank rule, instead your team gets bonus points for making an opponent surrender. Surrendered opponents will be disarmed, handcuffed with plastic strip-tape binders, and marched back to base. Once there, they can, at the discretion of the capturing team, be interrogated in any way that is deemed fit. a referee "adviser" will watch the interrogation to make sure it does not leave any long-lasting wounds or marks. Any player who permanently injures another during an interrogation will be thrown out for the day. And the waiver you sign hold the field harmless for any injuries through interrogation. Really, it does. Srsly. k thx bi.

If you are hit in the chest of head, you're dead. You can not move, and you have to have your body dragged back to a staging area. Once there, you will receive your death certificate and be escorted back to your vehicle as you are done for the day. If all your party is killed, you are given your exit papers and you must leave the premises. If you come back, you must have a different "character" in mind.

If you get hit in the arm or belly, you're wounded. You can heal yourself, or have a medic heal you. But you may not use that limb anymore. If you return to the field on later weekends, your wound will still be in effect until the "natural" heal time has taken effect. 2 months or so should be enough, I mean this is all just "for fun" right? Any gun hit disables the gun. You have to spend money (real money, not fake stuff) to get it "fixed" before you can play with it at the field ever again. The gunsmith will fix the damaged gun (wipe it off) and return it to you.

And cheaters? Well if you get caught cheating let's say that the punishment will be worse than any interrogation a player can come up with. And you will be gently persuaded to never cheat again, let alone come back to the field.

So let's do this, really. Let's make paintball more "realistic". Let's embrace the war-like ideals and the "we love combat" mentality. And when the press grills us, and the law-makers make the citizens terrified of us, and laws are passed to regulate paintball we can take the usual paintball stance of "WE have no idea why you hate us! We're just having fun! We're not doing anything wrong! You'd understand if you played once! Paintball isn't like war!" But it is when you intentionally blur the lines.

Perception is half the reason that paintball is still held in disdain by people with some governmental power. We learned this back in the 90's and worked to change the image of paintball. "We" because all the players did what we could. We stopped talking about "guns", calling them "markers". We didn't talk about "kills" and "bullets", we changed the field locations and toned down on the para-military look. And now, we've come full circle. ESPN airs players talking about "killing" the other players with their "gats", and the rec-ball world wants to make the game more "realistic", as if playing paintball wasn't "extreme" enough.

"Blood red paint" is a small thing, but it blurs that line. Paintball ceases to be a sport and becomes mock combat, if only in the eyes of a paranoid lawmaker. Seen it before, listening to the Wisconsin DNR "expert researcher" who lectured to a group of lawmakers about how paintball warriors would storm the woods using fully-automatic machine paintguns and shoot blood red paint at each other in order to kill opponents. Sobering moment for all us players, industry types and field owners in attendance, because he passed this off as absolute truth.

There's a reason that we tried to get rid of these perceptions back in the 90's. Yes, it's a pain in the tail. Yes, it's overly "PC". Yes, a lot of us didn't like changing the language to suit people who didn't even play paintball. But you know what? If it means that a person in political power doesn't get the wrong impression about paintball and decides to not throw paintball markers into a proposed ban or regulation of firearms, I'll inconvenience myself and call it an "elimination" instead of a "kill".

Oh, and before you say this is unrealistic, ask "AussieBloke" about his gun cabinet.

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