It's an Epidemic

Pump paintball play is growing. Statistics in paintball have always been a little lacking, but from what I see and read, there is no denying that more players are playing with pumps. In recent years, several manufacturers have designed and produced new pump markers. Others have revisited old designs and rereleased these. They (the manufacturers) are only doing this because there is a market for it. So why has that market grown? Why have players chosen to pick up pumps, when they clearly handicap them, at least when they are playing against semi toting players?

Is the arms race over? For years (basically since the beginning of our sport), the quest to have an advantage in firepower has dominated players' minds. Do players no longer desire to have an advantage? The crucial factor in the arms race is the price of a paintball. Paintball prices were decreasing steadily throughout our game's history, that technological advances in firepower could be taken advantage of. Therefore, (almost) everyone wanted the fastest, most reliable paint shooter. That's what all the marketing was about (don't ever think that marketers do not have power to influence).

But paintball prices have seemingly gone as low as they can. In recent years, paintball prices have actually risen slightly, indicating that the low that was hit, was probably a little too low for manufacturers to sustain. With a paintball price equilibrium reached, there is no more need to increase the ROF technology. What would be the point of a marker shooting 50 bps for instance, if players could only use the feature for a few seconds to shoot their budget of paintballs?

Pump use in paintball seems to be growing at an inverse rate of tournament paintball declining. This may be sheer coincidence, or there may be some common factors affecting both. Economic conditions are probably having some effect. I personally think it definitely has something to do with value. Let's not forget that paintball is a recreational activity. Paintball is played by individuals because they want to play, not because they have to play.

People want to play paintball because it is fun. For years, the emphasis was to market paintball as a competitive sport. People chose to play paintball competitively, for the fun, just as they might choose to play baseball, soccer, football, or basketball. As long as competitive paintball was affordable and fun (seen as having good value) it was growing. The peak time for competitive paintball was during the time when paintball prices were dropping to their lowest point. As prices were dropping, players could afford to shoot a competitive amount of paintballs and could afford to buy them. It was fun and it was affordable. Average player paintball consumption during that time was increasing as the prices dropped. However, when the prices stopped dropping and in fact rose some, but players still felt the need to shoot "competitive" amounts of paintballs to stand a chance of being successful on the field, it became less affordable. The voluntary recreational activity decreased in value. Players were dropping out of the competitive scene and less were entering and those that did enter, left after shorter stints.

But people still want to play paintball. It's still fun to feel that adrenaline of hunting and being hunted. It's been part of our human instincts since... before we were even humans. It's part of what we are as animals in the animal kingdom. Paintball is probably as close to what we can get to truly hunting and being hunted without serious injury. Therefore I think it's natural for humans to be drawn to the activity. It's probably the reason we see many more males at fields than females as well. The hunting instinct is stronger in human males than females. That instinct has been cultivated over hundreds of thousands of years.

Modern life limits us by economic pressures. As much as we would like to, we can't do everything we want to do, even if driven by deep instinctual desires. Pump play allows us to feel the adrenaline of hunting and being hunted, and still feel we are getting sound value. As the number of pump players increase at local fields, other, often newer players see that playing with pump markers is viable. They see those using them having fun without it emptying their bank account. They want to keep playing paintball and now they see a way of accomplishing that. Pump play lets them have affordable fun. It's good value. It's no wonder we are having a pump epidemic.

Social Proof and Marketing Paintball

A while back, there was a thread on PBN talking about marketing in paintball. In that thread, someone mentioned a couple of books they had read during their marketing education in College and mentioned that these books were worthwhile reading. Since, as a business owner, I could always use more customers - having too many customers is always a better problem than having too few customers-I ordered these books to better educate myself. My mother always told me that one rarely gets dumber from learning. Anyway, one of the books was Robert B. Cialdini's 'Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion' and I have to admit, I found it very interesting. It has been, to my recollection, the only book that I finished reading and then started over again from the beginning to read it a second time. I'm currently about halfway through the second time. One thing I like about this book is that it is not written by a marketer. As a matter of fact, for each "trick" he points out that marketers use, he provides a countermeasure to prevent getting reeled in by the marketers.

Anyway, the book covers a section what the author calls "social proof". In a nutshell, what social proof means is when a person is met with uncertainty about a situation, they often look at others to see what the correct response or action needed to be taken is. Everyone does it at times. Teenagers do it very often for instance because teenagers often feel uncertain. They are constantly looking at others to see what the "correct" way to behave is. But it's not just teenagers, everyone does it. It saves time. Our days are filled with choices that must be made constantly, and social proof is one way to take short cuts so we do not have to deal with weighing the pros and cons of every little choice we need to deal with. Most of the time, following what others are doing, is the proper choice. Sometimes it's not; the Jonestown massacre (suicides) would be a very good example of when it may not be the right choice. But that's not what I want to talk about. This is a blog about paintball, after all.

Long before I read this book, I was well aware that paintball has always been heavily influenced by word of mouth. I think anyone involved with paintball for any length of time is aware of this. I've also always said that word of mouth can work for you and against you. Basically if people feel they have received good value (the entertainment was more than the cost), it will work positively. If however, people feel they didn't get good value (the entertainment was not worth the cost), it will work negatively.

Word of mouth, is basically the concept of "social proof". Those that know nothing or very little about paintball, will be influenced by those that have experienced paintball firsthand. Sometimes it doesn't even need to be firsthand. If Johnny's cousin's brother-in-law said that playing paintball hurts like hell, that might be enough to keep Johnny from trying to play the game. However, if the cousin's brother-in-law said it's the most fun he's ever had without having to remove his clothes, Johnny might just give it a try. Social proof. My friend says it's OK, so it must be OK.

For many years, paintball had a very high growth rate. This had much to do with word of mouth. People experiencing paintball were having a lot of fun and were telling everyone they ran into about how much fun they had, and next thing you know, those people were giving it a try too. And then those people were out spreading the word, and so on, and so on, and so on... When I did research in 2000 and 2001 to see if paintball was a viable business to get into, I read that it was the fastest growing extreme sport in North America. This was based on data from a few years prior to that date, but it was still quoted for several years after that. Looking back now, we know that paintball's growth rate went for a nosedive in approximately 2004. We also know that 2004 was in the midst of a very good economic cycle in North America, so the nose dive had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of economic downturn that happened several years later.

Paintball fell out of favour. The negative side of word of mouth had obviously reared its ugly head. Apparently Johnny was no longer hearing about the good value his buddies were getting during their paintball experience. The cost hadn't gone up. If anything, the cost had gone down. Also, Johnny and his buddies were probably employed and making more money than they'd ever made before. So if the cost hadn't gone up, the entertainment (fun) must have gone down. Johnny's buddies weren't coming home after their paintball experience and telling everyone how much fun they were having. Maybe they were telling their buddies how awful their experience was. I'm sure there were varying degrees of positive and negative feelings, but rest assured, the overall trend was that word of mouth had gotten more negative. I'm sure it didn't happen overnight either. I'm sure it was a gradual shift from positive to negative that happened over several years.

So what happened over those years to change people's opinion about paintball? This is where we get the chicken or egg debate happening. Two main things happened over the years prior to 2004, and continued happening for a while after 2004. First, technology advanced to a point where, by most people's standards, extreme amount of paintballs could be shot out of a marker. Secondly, paintball prices decreased to a point where players could afford to buy the paintballs needed so they could be shot out of the newly developed technology. With cheap paintballs and higher technology, it was only natural for the average player to shoot higher volumes to increase their odds during their encounters with other players on the field. But that was, literally, a game changer. The game changed and unless there was some outside intervention, would never again be the same. Word of mouth (social proof) would never again be the same.

Let's look at competitive paintball for a moment. It was always assumed that if competitive paintball was shown on television, that it would become more mainstream; that it would be accepted by more people. Social proof. If people see others doing it, they might be inclined to think that it's an OK thing to try and do themselves. Look at all those people having fun. I think I'll give that a try. There is probably some truth to that, as far as competitive paintball goes. On the other hand, if "regular" people, who know very little about paintball, see competitive paintball on TV, they might get a totally different feeling. These people now see paintball as a very extreme competitive sport. Something that is fun to watch for a while because it's almost absurd to them, but not something they would probably be interested in doing themselves. These people might now have that image in their minds when the topic of paintball arises. In that respect, having competitive paintball on TV, may actually hurt the rest of the paintball world (namely anything that isn't competitive paintball, which we know is the majority of paintball). With the majority of paintball hurt by competitive paintball on TV, I have to wonder how much overall good it serves competitive paintball? It has always been my feeling that the majority of competitive paintball players progressed to competitive paintball from recreational paintball.

It seems to me, that we, as an industry have done a huge disservice to ourselves by first, allowing high technology to be utilized at the local field and secondly, by putting competitive paintball on a pedestal, and trying to portray it as "paintball" in general. Competitive paintball is NOT what the average player wants to play for their first game. That doesn't mean that some of those "average" people might not progress to competitive paintball. We know that some do. But by having changed the game as we have, we don't get to see nearly as many of those average people. Social proof, in the form of word of mouth, is keeping them away.

Life is for the Dogs

Warning: this is not paintball related.

We got a puppy last might. When I say we, I mean my immediate family which consists of myself, my wife, my adopted niece (15) and my adopted nephew (14). It's been something that's been in the works for a long time (several years). I was the sole naysayer when the discussion of dog ownership came up. It's not that I don't like dogs. I grew up with a dog as a kid and was quite attached to it. It was part of the family and I was very sad when my father had to take it for its last car ride to the vet, even though I wasn't living at home anymore.

But as an adult I weighed all the pros and cons and realized that although I like dogs, there are too many negative aspects to owning a dog. First there is the expense. I wasn't thrilled watching my wife peel off the hundred dollar bills yesterday to purchase the dog. Then she peeled off a few more to get some basic supplies and food and toys. I know the ongoing cost of food won't be stopping. Then there will be the vet bills like having to get the dog "fixed" (apparently they come out broken) as well as all its "shots".

Then there is the inconvenience and cost of the damage that it will be doing. In the first 12 hours of ownership, our new love and joy has vomited in a car, tried to chew a chair (part of a new $5,000 dining room set), urinated on the new hardwood, and ran it's paws down our leather couches several times attempting to climb up. Oh and no one in the house got much sleep last night. It seems new dogs don't like being left alone in a new strange house while everyone is sleeping (or trying to).

I'm really looking forward to finding someone to look after her when we want to head out of town for a weekend or longer holiday. Shouldn't be a problem. Everyone loves dogs.

Those early morning and late evening walks in the cold, rainy weather will be delightful, I'm sure.

Oh yes, and then there is the dog doo doo to deal with. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of being sent out into the back yard to dig a hole and then retrieving dog doo doo to fill it up with. Of course these days when you take your dog out for a walk, it's the dogs master that does the dirty work. Sccop the poop. When I was a kid, people just let their dog squat on the side of the trail and then pretended not to notice and walk away. Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with people cleaning up after their dogs as is now common practice, I'm just not looking forward to it.

I was out voted in getting a dog, but that doesn't mean I don't get to spend quality time with it. It's sleeping beside me right now as a matter of fact. You see my wife works and both the kids go to school and I work mostly out of our home during the week, so guess who is going to spend the majority of quality time with our little bundle of joy?

Do I sound bitter? Maybe I am a bit. But I do get to share in the pros of dog ownership as well. I get to pet it and even hug it if I want. The doggie breath and drool really isn't all that bad, once you settle with the fact that it's your dog and a member of the family and not just some random dog's bad breath and drool.

The kids fought all last night and this morning about who can spend time with the dog. I know this will change within about a month to fighting over who has to spend time with the dog. Right now the dog is getting lots of attention. Lots of petting and hugging from everyone in the family (yes even me, although not too much hugging). But I know that it won't be too long before we'll be making the kids spend time with the dog so it doesn't feel neglected.

But that's enough off topic stuff. I've got to go anyway as the dog is whining . I think it needs to go outside again. now where did I put the shovel? Hope I can find it before someone steps in it. Oh well. Shit happens!

It all comes down to value

At the upcoming Field Owners' Conference in Orlando running in conjunction with the PSP World Cup, there will, it seems, be just as much discussion about airsoft and lasertag as alternatives to paintball for field owners. As a matter of fact, I saw a little while ago that there was reference to the conference as a tag sport field owners' event rather than a paintball field owners' event. If you go to the event website, you'll be hard pressed to find the work "paintball" in the description of the event or its agenda. There seem to be just as many advertisers and promoters from other tag sports outside of paintball as well.

Looking at this, I might get the impression that paintball is losing steam and other tag sports, like airsoft, are gaining ground. Has paintball run its course? Is airsoft picking up the ball that paintball dropped? As I've said many times, change most often comes about due to economic reasons (unless it is legislated by a governing agency). The only reason airsoft will leapfrog paintball is if customers see more value in airsoft. As far as most leisure activities are concerned, there are two main criteria for finding value in them. The first is the entertainment value (usually described as "fun"), and the second is cost.

Something that costs more can still be more popular than a less expensive alternative, if the "fun" factor is higher as well. Airsoft, played on a regular basis, is less expensive than paintball, mostly due to the lower cost of ammunition. Also, airsoft players, for the most part, don't seem to feel the need as much to play in a place with as much infrastructure in place that seems to be wanted and needed by paintball players. So if airsoft is cheaper to play than paintball, what will make people choose paintball over airsoft. Obviously, the first criteria, "fun" needs to make up for the increase in cost. Those that know me, know that this is where I believe paintball has dropped the ball.

The average paintball playing customer at our field probably spends a little more than the average paintball playing customer at the "average" North American paintball field. Yet we are holding our own as far as participation goes and have had good growth while others have seen declines. Also, airsoft in our neck of the woods seems to be played very minimally still. How could this be? Why do people in our area choose to play paintball at a relatively "expensive" facility when there are cheaper tag sport alternatives available? It's the "fun" aspect of course. Our paintball field, through careful manipulation, promotes and almost ensures a lower volume environment than the "average" North American paintball field. This translates into more "fun", for a larger number of people. The fun is considered of higher value and people are willing to pay a little more for it.

At many paintball fields, that do not actively try to control high volume paintball play, the "fun" factor is lower (yes, this is my opinion and yours may differ - but I think my opinion is shared by more people). Therefore spending more at a paintball field than the airsoft alternative, is no longer considered better value. This why Joe's Paintball Shop is now Joe's Paintball and Airsoft Shop. It's also why paintball field owners are going to Orlando to learn how they can incorporate airsoft and lasertag into their offerings.

The really naive paintball field owners will try to manipulate the second of the criteria to create better value for their customers. They will try to make their paintball offering cheaper. They may lower their entry rates or they may lower their paintball costs. Most, when making a direct comparison between airsoft and paintball will realize that it is the ongoing cost of ammunition that makes paintball more expensive, so their knee jerk reaction will be to lower the cost of that. Maybe they will opt to offer Bring Your Own Paintballs (BYOP), so their customers can buy the paintballs of their choosing for the lowest price they can find. But those that read this blog regularly should know very well by now that this will affect the first of the criteria, "fun", in a negative way for most participants, especially new participants. So decreasing the cost but also decreasing the fun by doing so, will not necessarily mean that there will be an increase in "value" for the customer. It may very well be the exact opposite, in that the average customer may feel it is a decrease in value. And this is exactly what, in my opinion, has been happening throughout North America (and I suspect most of the rest of the world as well). This is the reason that airsoft has gained an economic advantage over paintball and is being chosen by more and more consumers. And it's the reason paintball field owners are looking at offering airsoft (and lasertag) at their venues.

Inflation

Carter over at M. Carter Brown posted up a copy of May 1986 Frontline Magazine he scanned recently. Things have changed. Many for the better but looking and reading the articles, I bet the guys were having a heck of a lot of fun. I didn't start playing until a few years after this, but the pictures looked familiar enough. Some of the most interesting pages were the advertisings for me. Even back when I first started playing and buying the odd paintball magazine, I probably spent just as much time looking over the ads as I did the articles. I have a feeling most new players still do this, only today they are looking at what's available on the internet (no wonder print media is dying).

Being a field owner, the ads by other fields (in May 1986) caught my eye right away of course. For about $25 you could play for several hours including a pump action marker, camo, goggles (not like today's goggles of course) and included 2 to 3 tubes of paint and a couple of CO2's (12 gm.) . The tubes of paint held 10 balls of course. Additional paintballs, for those who wanted to go hog wild, could be purchased for about 15 cents each (or $1.50/tube). 40 cents for an additional co2 cartridge, which you would probably need for every 1.5 to 2 tubes of paint.

So I wanted to see what $25 in 1986 compared to in 2011 and googled an inflation calculator to find out. The answers varies slightly, depending on what indexes are being used in the calculation, but the answer is that $25 in 1986, is almost exactly double, or $50, today. I wonder if the average player today would be satisfied if they received a pump gun, 30 paintballs and 2 CO2 cartridges for $50? Of course they might be if paintball was in its infancy, pump guns were the only thing available, and the guy that shot over 50 paintballs in a day was considered an extremist. Heck, if they didn't know any better, players might be quite happy to fork over $50 and shoot 30 paintballs in a 3-4 hour session. They were then.

Mathematical equation for the success and growth of Competitive Paintball

Rereading my previous post, I realized it was damn hard to follow and comprehend (I blame it on Captain Morgan; he can be a bad influence). Therefore I'm going to write it down as a very simple mathematical equation that anyone that passed grade 6 math should be able to understand. Please, if there is actually a real economics equation for this, I apologize for my simplicity. This is the way it looks in my head (which tends to be very simplistic).
For competitive paintball to be successful, the following equation must hold true for enough individuals to sustain the activity (by the way, this also is the case for recreational paintball):

E-P≥C+T

Where:

E=Enjoyment
The enjoyment of taking part in the activity. With competitive paintball that enjoyment often takes the form of satisfaction (i.e. satisfaction of winning or placing well or the satisfaction that comes with improvement), but it also includes anything that has a positive effect on the experience (i.e. camaraderie with teammates, adrenaline associated with hunting and being hunted among others)

P=Pain
The pain, discomfort or dissatisfaction of taking part in the activity. The pain in competitive paintball (actually all paintball) is an obvious physical discomfort. The more often one is hit, the more the discomfort accumulates. Dissatisfaction in competitive paintball is similar to dissatisfaction in almost all competitive team sports. It can be frustration with team members, frustration with tournament organization, officiating among many others. Basically anything that will have a negative effect on the experience (hence it follows a negative sign in the equation).

C=Cost
The financial cost to take part in the activity. This will include all finances to train for and take part in competitive paintball events. It also includes associated indirect costs such as travel, accommodations and food.

T=Time
The time that the activity takes. This is time that if the person were to not take part, they could use to do something else (i.e. time that could be spent taking part in another activity, time that could be spent with loved ones, family or friends). Time is a resource, much like money. Time is not limitless; everyone only has a certain amount of it. As our society and cultures advance, it seems that individuals have less and less free time, meaning that time becomes a more treasured or valuable resource.

Marketing in Competitive Paintball

Having just read the book How to Market Your Paintball Field and then having read some posts on VFTD about marketing National Paintball leagues, or lack thereof, it made me wonder who and to what end, competitive paintball is marketing to.

Obviously the competitive paintball side of our industry wants to become more popular. I'm sure competitive paintball would like to have more participants and I'm sure they wouldn't mind having throngs of fans. Fans willing to pay to watch competitions live, but also fans that would watch the competitions aired either in live broadcasts or even broadcast after the fact. Fans that would watch regularly and who could be marketed to by outside sources and would pay for advertising during these broadcasts.

I think paintball will always have problems establishing itself as a viewer friendly game. Fans of almost all sporting events prefer to see competitions live, whether in person or in live broadcasts. Every form of competitive paintball that I have watched, with the possible exception of 1 vs. 1 competitions, are hard to follow. Yes you can watch one individual player or one individual battle, but while you are watching that, chances are you missed some other crucial, tactical play that had a huge bearing on the outcome of the game. An edited broadcast of the competition could help this considerably, but who wants to watch a game that chances are they already know the outcome?

I don't see competitive paintball ever attracting a large viewership. Therefore, I assume marketing efforts, when there are any, are made with the mindset of attracting more participants. This brings me back to the book, How to Market your Paintball Field. The very first thing the book implied, and repeated several times in the rest of the book, was that a paintball field must ensure the new player has a "good experience", or else any marketing that is done to attract that player, would be worthless. A "good experience" to me means something that is enjoyable to do and doesn't cost more than the value of that enjoyment. It doesn't matter how enjoyable something is, if it costs more than the perceived value of that enjoyment, the amount of participants is going to be severely limited (by the way, time is also a cost of participation).

So how much enjoyment is there in competitive paintball? Most of the "enjoyment" in serious competitive sports actually comes from a sense of accomplishment, either winning or at least doing well, or seeing an improvement in your personal or team's abilities. When players or teams stop improving, the enjoyment or satisfaction factor decreases. If the cost to take part stays the same, or maybe even increases as a team tries to climb to the next level, these stagnant participants are going to start dropping out. This is not a problem with just paintball, but virtually all competitive sports. When players lose hope of improving, they stop taking the sport seriously, and thoughts of other activities enter their minds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because the marketing that competitive paintball does (or should be doing) is basically to try to attract new players into the game; new players to replace at hopefully a faster rate than those aforementioned players are dropping out at. So back to the "experience". There are certain sports that are considered mainstream sports in our society. These are sports that are played by virtually everyone in some form, some time in their life (mostly as kids). Sports like baseball, soccer, basketball. These are all competitive sports where the participants get enjoyment and the enjoyment is greater than the cost to participate. These and other sports are widely participated in for that reason. Competitive paintball is not as widely participated in. Why not?

Competitive paintball is a competitive team sport, just like baseball, soccer, and basketball, but there is a huge difference. First of course is the cost of participation. it's much, much higher. To overcome that, competitive paintball must be much, much more enjoyable and I believe in some aspects it is. There are a lot of people that like to shoot guns and the adrenaline that flows by being both the "hunter" and the "hunted" is not surpassed by any other competitive sport, in my opinion. That places a high value on the game, and is the only reason competitive paintball can exist at all.

But the new player stepping onto the speedball field for his first day of competitive paintball, is he going to feel that value? Is he going to leave after that first initial experience convinced that the value of participation is equal to or higher than the cost of participation? Is he going to "feel" that value with second, third, fourth and fifth hit after his elimination? Is he going to "feel" that value as he is "walked" off the field? He may feel that it is all worthwhile; that the value is there. There are certainly thousands and thousands of people who do. But there are a lot more people playing baseball today than there are playing paintball today, even though the adrenaline will not pump as strong through their veins. There are a lot more people playing soccer today as well. Basketball too. Countless other competitive team sports as well. The new players playing baseball for the first time will not "feel" punches to the body as they are walking off the field to take their turn at bat. They will not "feel" multiple stings to the body as the other team tries to get them out.

The experience a paintball player has is twofold. There is the enjoyment/satisfaction factor and there is the pain factor. Both are part of the experience and both combined are what make up the sum total of the overall experience. The cost of that experience (or the cost of participation) in dollars and time, needs to be less than that sum total.

For years competitive paintball grew with very little marketing. During these years, the sum total of the experience was considerably different. The enjoyment of shooting guns was there. The enjoyment of being both the hunter and the hunted was there. But the pain factor that the new player felt was considerably less. The sum total of the experience was completely different. The cost of participation was still high (compared to most other sports), but the sum total of the enjoyment/satisfaction level outweighed the cost for a greater amount of people. It still does that today for thousands of people, but the number has decreased. For a number of years now, we are still getting the players/teams that drop out, as we always do, but the number choosing to participate has decreased. That number will increase slightly as the economy improves and a few more people can afford the cost of participation, but it will never be what it was, not unless competitive paintball changes dramatically, so the sum total of the experience is more enjoyable to a larger segment of the population. But that's not going to happen, at least not without some major changes in the mindset of those heading up competitive paintball and those already playing competitive paintball. And we all know how big the chance of that happening is.