Recreational or Competitive Paintball?

I’d like to touch on tournament representation (and lack thereof) in some locals. Since I am most familiar with my local scene, I’ll start there, and probably won’t venture much further than there.

We are located on an island, for those of you who don’t know. Vancouver Island specifically. Approximately half the population is located at the southern tip of the island (Victoria, BC), and the other half is located on the rest of the island. TNT Paintball is on the southern tip, close to Victoria.

Representation in competitive paintball has been low in the southern region of the island for as long as I can remember. There is constant talk from competitive players on the subject. Why are there so few competitive players coming from the area of the island with the highest population density?

Here’s my take. First of all, the majority of competitive paintball players didn’t start out playing competitive paintball. Just about all the competitive players I have met, played their first paintball game on a recreational (woodsball) facility. After a few outings of recreational play, they went on to discover competitive play. I believe this is common almost everywhere in the paintball world.

Of those who try competitive play, some like it and stick with it. Others try it, find out it’s not their thing, and either quit paintball altogether or go back to recreational play.

Does it sound like I’m getting off track? Just bear with me a moment. On the southern part of the island, around the Victoria Island, we’ve had several decent commercial recreational facilities for quite a number of years. We’ve had one commercial recreational field since very close to the beginning of paintball. There are ample places for the recreational player to play. On the rest of the island, there are fewer commercial recreational facilities and those that have been available were not at the same level as their south island counterparts.

Around Victoria, players have the ability to go to several commercial recreational fields and be relatively assured of being entertained and having fun. Many of those that have “graduated” to competitive play, have returned to recreational play after finding out that competitive play is not all that they thought it would be. The recreational fields are still available to them and they can return to them at any time, and continue having fun playing paintball at those fields. There are options for the paintball player that wants to continue playing paintball past his/her Newbie stage.

North of Victoria, there are less options. There are still options, but they aren’t quite as good (sorry if I’m hurting anyone’s feelings here). Once a player “graduates” to competitive play, returning back to sub-par recreational play just doesn’t seem that inviting. So players in that region are more likely to stick with competitive paintball and hence the makeup of the competitive scene is somewhat skewed. There are more competitive players from the less populated area than there are players from the more populated area, by quite a margin. The reason being, in my opinion, is the difference in paintball choices for the population.

That is why the lower part of the island probably has close to ten times as many people playing recreational paintball on any given day than the northern region, yet less than half of the competitive players hail from that same population base. The players choose to play recreational paintball rather than competitive paintball because, quite frankly, they get more bang for their entertainment dollar at the recreational fields.

Hot Seat

68 Caliber is putting industry people in the hot seat and letting you and me field the questions.

The way I understand it, folks from the paintball industry, that most of us will at least have heard of, will be available for a week at a time to answer questions that we throw at them. Fist up is Gino Postorivo of Valken Paintball. Personally, I’m a little hesitant to ask anything too controversial of Gino. I mean he’s of Italian heritage (at least I assume he is) rising from the downtrodden streets of Jersey. You never know what kind of connections Gino might have (just kidding Gino, don’t get mad…please).

Anyway, it’s a cool concept and a good opportunity for us commoners to have more or less direct contact with some of the bigger names in PB Industry. Check it out. http://68caliber.com/

Followers

Wow, it’s official. Our little blog has followers in the double digits. Thank you to Canarias Paintball for breaking the barrier. Actually, I think we only have nine because Steve Davidson is such a big fan, he signed up twice. Go Steve! But officially, it’s ten, because Steve Davidson is a pretty common name, so it might actually be two different Steve Davidsons. That’s what I’m going with. Ten is no army yet. How about a small band or Mercenaries? Reiner’s Renegades. Has a ring to it, doesn't it.

Personally, I don’t quite understand why anyone drops by to read this stuff…y’all must be really bored. There is probably some way that one can track who is visiting and such, but I’m so low tech, I haven’t figured out how to do it. I’ve heard from a couple of locals here lately that they read regularly. Who knew? One even told me that he knows lots of people who read this dribble. Yet comments are few and far between and I only recall one comment ever from a known local.

Speak up. Even if you disagree with what I write, which I’m sure many of you do. I’ll let you have your say before I prove you are wrong. The Internet and all its tools, has a lot wrong with it, but the ability to communicate and share ideas with the rest of the world isn’t one of them. So I look forward to reading what more of you have to say. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be shy. You can always use a fake name (you didn’t think my name was really Reiner Schafer, did you?) or the dreaded anonymous if you are afraid you might embarrass yourself. Just say something....all you ghosts in the attic are starting to freak me out.

Widgets

I heard about widgets for quite a while before biting the bullet and buying a widget. I heard about all the great things one can do with a widget and how much fun you can have with a widget. I didn’t know if widgets were hyped up beyond their actual usefulness or if they really were as good as they were raved about, but I knew that eventually I would try a widget out. The big price tag has always been a hindrance, so until recently, all I knew about widgets was what I heard from others.

Well finally I stumbled upon a widget for half the price of all the other widgets I’d seen until that point. I decided to take the plunge and buy myself a widget and experience all the excitement myself. I brought my widget home, took it out of its packaging and gazed in amazement at my beautiful widget. I was a little hesitant about using my widget as I had no personal experience with widgets, but I gave it a go.

Well, to make a long story short, I now think widgets suck. My widget did not live up to its expectations. Maybe buying the half price widget was my mistake. Maybe the more expensive widget would have provided me with all the excitement everyone told me about. I don’t know. All I know is that I am done with widgets. I’m not about to spend another dime on widgets in the hopes that I will actually get enjoyment out of a widget. The widget makers and sellers have lost this customer. I’m going back to my doohickey.

Professional Paintball

The looming question from an outsider…can a Professional Paintball League survive with no one paying the bills? With no viewers, save a few clamoring wannabe elite players, and dwindling sponsor money, how long can we have “professional players, teams, and leagues?

Professional players, by definition, need to be paid. The amount they get paid may be debatable and maybe it’s just enough to break even after their expenses. But a league that requires their professional players to pay their own way, is not really a professional league. It’s a league made up of the best players that can afford to play, not the best players money can buy as is the case in most other “professional” sports.

What we call Professional Paintball is the top tier in competitive paintball, no argument. Any popular sport will have varying levels of competitiveness. Any popular sport has kids aspiring for greatness. The level of luxury attached to achieving the top spots, has much to do with the number of kids and the strength of those aspirations. If the sport is fun to play, that will bolster the number of people who want to take part. Paintball is fun to play. It’s got that going for it and all of us involved in the sport know this. But there is a big difference in a sport that is fun to play and one that is popular enough to attract big money in the form of paying viewers and/or revenue from manufacturers selling high volumes to fans and throngs of aspiring athletes. Paintball does not have that going for it and I doubt that it ever will.

Those involved with high-level paintball can wish all they want that the tide will turn and money will start flowing into their coffers. But unless a format can be found that people will actually want to watch, or will allow the masses to take part because it is fun AND affordable, wishing it to be so will be as far as it goes. That’s my take.

Staffing

My least favorite part of operating a paintball field is staffing. Don’t get me wrong. I like my staff and many of them have started off or become friends over the years. But staffing a paintball field, at least the way we run ours is a little tricky.

First, we rarely know exactly how many staff we will need on a particular day. It’s always a best guess and we try to side on the side of caution, often bringing in more staff than we actually needed. Being understaffed sucks for everyone; the overworked staff, stressed out supervisors, and under-serviced customers. There is nothing wrong with being overstaffed other than it costs money. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like spending money superfluously.

Then we have to make sure we have the right people on hand. We need mature, experienced staff to take control and keep a handle on running their groups, and we need to have enough other, possibly less experienced staff, to make sure everyone is taken care of and follow the rules. Staffing with only mature experienced refs would be best of course, but there are never enough around. Let’s face it, although working at a paintball field is not hard work and might even be considered more enjoyable than working at many other jobs, it’s not a job most will pick as a permanent career choice. Eventually, all our staff move onto bigger and better things, and to be honest, I encourage them to do so.

Next the problem of staff wanting days off arises. The biggest problem is when the staff wants to play paintball. Often they know each other and have become friends so they want to play together. Pump only days have created problems for us over the years as many of our staff seem to drift towards pump play. We encourage that of course, but when we have a pump only game, we also have at least one regular open game and may have one or more private groups as well. We need staff to operate a business and when most of them want to play, it gets tough. So far we have always found enough volunteers to forfeit playing to help us out. We are always very grateful to those that make the sacrifice.

We try to stay away from hiring tournament players because practices and tournament days draw everyone to those events and away from work. I have no problem with staff that play tournament ball, it just creates a scheduling problem, so in general I don’t hire a lot of tournament players. This year, some of the staff has chosen to form a new tournament team. I wish them well. They practice every Saturday. Our busier of the two days we are open. We are just getting into our busier season and now find we need to hire several new employees to make up for the shortfall. Many of the staff that are on the tournament team are all asking to work on Sundays because they need money (funny how playing tournament ball can make you broke – another topic). But I know that when tournament season starts, these players will be gone on tournament days (mostly Sundays) and I’ll be left scrambling to find enough staff on those days again.

There are no easy solutions. If we hire way more “on-call” staff than we need, we get complaints that they aren’t getting enough work and will eventually find other places to earn money. If we do not hire more staff, there will come a time when we will be turning customers away, because we don’t have enough staff to run all the games. That’s not really an option. We can’t afford to be turning customers away too often.

I hate scheduling staff. I can certainly understand why some industries have mechanized most of their operations so they don’t have as many staffing issues. It sucks for our society to lose jobs, but I can certainly understand the reasoning behind it. It makes managers’ lives a whole lot easier. Now if we could only develop the paintball field staff robot.

Burnout

You’re probably reading the title and thinking Reiner is going to tell us he’s finally burned out. He’s going to call it quits and leave us alone. Well…no such luck. No, this is about player burnout. But it’s not about your hardcore tourney player spending two or three days a week at the field and unable to sustain the pace, although I’m sure that’s an issue within the tournament player community.

The burnout I’m thinking of is probably totally different than most players or even field owners think about. I see it all the time. I can often forecast it on a player’s second or third paintball outing ever. This burnout has to do with the Newbie that falls in love with the game on his first time at our field. He comes to the counter and tells us how much fun he is having; how he had no idea he was going to like paintball this much; how he’s going to do this regularly from now on.

We then see him the next weekend or maybe a couple of weeks later. Sometimes he’s already bought his own gear by the time he comes for his second ever paintball outing. He keeps coming week after week, hardly missing a weekend. Soon he’s one of the “regulars” because he is always there. The other regulars know him by name. This goes on for a few months and then we start seeing him a little less often. Instead of coming every weekend, it’s once or twice per month. Then we won’t see him at all anymore.

The way I see it, these types of players have “too much of a good thing”. The novelty wears off. As I recognize this trend, I will often warn these players that if they come too often, they’ll probably end up burning out. But they never believe it. They are infatuated with their newfound hobby.

This is why I always have to smile when I read posts from players or field owners (or potential future field owners who are going to run a field the “right” way) about how paintball should be really inexpensive for players so they can afford to do it all the time. I read it and smile because I know that most “regulars” will only be regulars for a relatively short time. Then they will move onto something else that catches their interest. But the field owner has based his business plan on attracting and keeping lots of players, and keeping them coming back regularly because at their field they can afford to play all the time.

As a field owner, I have found out and understand that I have a much healthier business if my customers come regularly, but much less often. It’s best if they pursue other interests outside of paintball, and not get too infatuated with just paintball. I have a feeling that is not the way most field owners feel about their customers. I’m sure most want to hook their new players hard and have them come back as often as possible. Sometimes, even I think I’m a bit of an odd duck, a business owner that doesn’t want his customers coming too often. How odd is that?