50 Caliber Conversion Kits

So in the comment section of my last entry “Holding Back 50 Caliber Evolution” -  http://reiner-schafer.blogspot.ca/2013/02/holding-back-50-caliber-evolution.html#comment-form ) , I hinted that there was something coming down the pike that might be noteworthy; a marker providing the reliability of something like a Tippmann 98 for the 50 caliber market.  Something currently not available, but being sought by many field owners.

Well, I’ve been given permission to provide a little more info, although at this point the manufacturer has asked to remain anonymous until the official launch hopefully happening in a few short weeks.  Being released shortly will be a 50 caliber modification for 68 caliber markers including the Tippmann’s 98,the FT12 and I believe some other markers as well (the Tippmann’s are the only ones I have 100% confirmation for at this point).

It is not a typical conversion kit that requires a breach adaptor, bolt and barrel to work, rather 1 piece that adapts the gun to 50 cal.  It apparently does not even need a separate 50 caliber barrel, the stock barrel can be screwed back on after the conversion is done.  The conversion can also be reversed.  In the case of the FT12, to convert from 68 to 50 caliber, or from 50 back to 68 caliber can be done in less than a minute.  The 98 takes longer due to having to separate the clamshell body halves to get at the internals.  The price has not been confirmed, but is indicated to be much less than a separate new rental marker like the Spyder Opus.  If the modification does not affect the reliability of the Tippmann marker, we may have a winner on our hands.

 The obvious advantage from a field owner’s perspective (especially a relatively small operation field owner) is that he/she does not need to have two complete sets of guns to be able to cater to both the 50 caliber and 68 caliber market.  For someone like myself, that is still in the “trial” stages of offering 50 caliber games, I don’t have to invest nearly as much as I thought I would have to invest to give it a try, and hopefully I will have something that is more reliable than the Spyder.

I am hoping to get a prototype in my hands sometime in the next week or two and then will hopefully have a little more info.

Holding Back 50 Caliber Evolution

Communicating lately with various field owners, some who are already offering 50 caliber as part of their services and some who would like to but have not taken the leap yet, I’m hearing more and more complaints about the lack of a decent mechanical semi-auto that is reliable enough for rental use.  Most seem to be using Kingmann’s Spyder Opus as it seems to be the best of the bad.  The biggest complaint, like most Spyders, is that when a ball breaks, the gun will stop functioning to the point where it will not fire without being torn apart, cleaned and then reassembled.  If a ball breaks in a Tippmann for instance, at least it will still fire and the renter can finish the game.  Thirty seconds of cleaning and it’s usually good to for the rest of the day.  After the day is over, if sufficiently dirty, it will need to be stripped and cleaned properly, but at least that can be done during a time when it’s not keeping a customer from playing a game.

There seems to be a clear Demand for a reliable 50 caliber rental, but at this time, there is no Supply available.  Have the manufacturers forgotten about the basic rules of economics.  Would it not be easier to fulfill a Demand that already exists and is not being Supplied than trying to add another bell or whistle onto markers that there are already more than enough choices of out there?  The market is flooded with mid-high end electros.  The market is bare of simple, reliable, mechanical, rental worthy 50 caliber markers.

It’s in the best interest of manufacturers to expand paintball’s attraction to a wider demographic.  Here’s an ideal way to do so, yet everyone seems to be asleep at the switch.  Let’s get on it.

Evolution versus Revolution

Merriam-Webster has several definitions for the word “revolution”, but the one that applies to the forthcoming discussion is this; “a changeover in use or preference especially in technology”.  A couple of examples of this would be the computer revolution and the foreign car revolution.

In 2009, Richmond Italia re-entered the paintball industry with a new company (GI Milsim).  He also came back with a revolutionary idea (well, he proposed it as being revolutionary); that being that 50 caliber paintballs would find a big place in the paintball market.  He basically told us that 50 caliber was better (and cheaper) than 68 caliber, and a switch should take place.  At least, that’s the way most people interpreted his marketing.

It didn’t take long for a counter-revolution to rise, with many self proclaimed experts in the player’s ranks, doing tests that demonstrated that 50 caliber was in fact inferior, rather than superior to 68 caliber paintball.  The counter-revolution was so massive and widespread that the 50 caliber revolution was squashed.  Italia stopped publicly marketing the 50 caliber revolution.  50 caliber was dead, or so most thought.

But GI Milsim never stopped making 50 caliber products.  Nor did other companies like Kingmann.  Other companies that were thinking of getting into the 50 caliber market did stop though, for the most part.  50 caliber was a viable option apparently in some parts of the world, where restrictions based on the energy of a projectile leaving the muzzle of a “gun”.  In some parts of the world, 68 caliber didn’t comply, 50 caliber did.  So there was still a market, albeit not as big as the lucrative North American market.

Three years later in 2012, JT entered the 50 caliber market with the JT Splatmaster; a 50 caliber spring powered paintball marker aimed at the young player market (8 years and up).  Surprisingly, this was met with a lot of good reviews from current players.  The difference?  Current players weren’t threatened.  JT wasn’t telling them that their new product was going to take over the paintball world.  JT wasn’t telling people that they would eventually have to change to JT Splatmasters and 50 caliber paintballs.  And so 50 caliber had started to find its niche in the paintball market.

But the evolution (not revolution) of 50 caliber paintball had started long before JT introduced the JT Splatmaster.  There were paintball fields all over North America that incorporated 50 caliber paintball as part of their offerings.  Although 50 caliber paintball was in some ways inferior to 68 caliber paintball, it’s big advantage lay in the fact that 50 caliber paintballs, when shot at the same velocity, carry much less energy.  Less energy translates into less pain when it hits a person.  Since paintball is all about hitting people with paintballs, this fact was not lost on those whose potential customers are concerned with the pain associated with paintball.

I’ve mentioned it on my blog before, that change almost always happens due to economic pressures, unless mandated by a governing entity.  The demand for less painful paintball is an economic reality.  Field owners know this (well most of them anyway).  Those that have previously read my blog, know that I have often talked about extreme/intense and less extreme/intense paintball.  You also know that I feel that the two versions attract different types of people.  Mostly I’ve related this to Rate of Fire (the number of paintballs shot divided by some measurement of time).  I’ve also mentioned that the drop in price of paintballs has majorly contributed to the increase in Rate of Fire.  The problem lies in the fact that field owners feel the need to sell larger volumes of paintballs to meet expenses (low volume sales with low prices doesn’t work out so well).  This is where the 50 caliber paintball comes in.  But 50 caliber paintballs aren’t priced all that much different than their 68 caliber cousins.  So how does this help the field owner?

With 50 caliber paintballs, field owners can still supply the easier to use semi-auto markers that make new players feel like Rambo, can still sell 50 caliber paintballs as cheap or even cheaper than 68 caliber, meaning the same or even higher volumes will be shot, but people playing the game will still have a less extreme experience due to less pain associated with hits.  This attracts a different demographic of customers; a demographic that wouldn’t play the 68 caliber version.  And so the 50 caliber Evolution is slowly taking place, even though the 50 caliber Revolution was squashed years ago.

Will 50 caliber replace 68 caliber paintball?  No, I doubt that will ever happen (unless mandated).  But 50 caliber paintball will grow and that’s a good thing.  It’s still paintball and it attracts people to paintball fields; more people.  I, for one, am not going to complain about that.

Participation in a New Game

If the game of paintball did not exist yet today, and you came up with the idea of shooting each other with little balls filled with goo to eliminate one another, how would you determine how many little ball of goo each person should have to ensure the participation rate was as high as it could be?  There would be no input from paintball players as there would be no paintball players yet.  For this discussion, we will eliminate cost out of the equation.  We’ll pretend paintballs are free for the purpose of this exercise.  We’ll also pretend that the technology exists to shoot at a very fast rate of fire.  We’ll be silly and say the ROF can be as high as 100 balls per second, so as not to limit our choices.

With no input from anyone with experience, it would be extremely difficult to guess how many paintballs should be given to each individual to ensure the highest participation rate.  If you were serious about starting this business/industry, you would need to find out, somehow.  You would need to do some testing.  You would need to invite some random segments of the population out to some trial games.  As you would have no idea at all, you would have to have these groups be armed with various amounts of paintballs and then get feedback on how many players would be interested in taking part in the game at the various levels of paintball consumption.  The bigger the random test groups, the better the information would be.

Common sense would tell us that if we were to graph the results, the graph would look like a hill or bell.  With zero paintballs given to each person, there would most likely be zero people wanting to take part in your new game of paintball (duh!).  At the other end of the scale, let’s be silly again and say one million paintballs were given to each player and each player had to make an effort to shoot all of them.  At that end of the scale we would most likely be very close to the zero mark again, meaning virtually no one would want to take part.  Moving along the chart starting at zero paintballs, with each additional paintball added, more people would be willing to take part.  At this stage of the chart one would also be moving away from boredom to excitement or fun.  As we approach the peak, boredom is eliminated completely (for that majority that resides at the peak) and replaced completely with fun or excitement.

Heading down the slope of the hill past the peak, fun is slowly replaced with something else.  I’m not sure what to call it, but at the extreme end of the scale some might consider it terror.  Where it approaches zero participants again, it would definitely be the virtual opposite of fun.  It certainly wouldn’t be boredom.

As the ingenious person who came up with this new game and wanting to have as many participants as possible, it makes sense that you would give each person the amount of paintballs that the peak of the hill on your chart indicated gave you the highest number of participants, assuming you could only make one choice in total.  A choice anywhere else along the line would result in less participants.

This scenario isn’t going to happen of course and certainly didn’t happen in the evolution of our game.  It couldn’t.  Paintballs were never free and the technology was definitely not limitless.  My point in doing this was to demonstrate that there is a valid reason for putting some sort of limit on the amount of paintballs players can shoot to maximize participation rates.  This is true for both recreational paintball and competitive paintball, even if most competitive paintball players don’t want to admit it.  The exercise would be the same, just the graph would shift a bit.

In competitive paintball especially, higher volumes of paintballs shot increase chances of winning, all else being equal.  When winning is at the top of the list of priorities, as it is in serious competitive paintball, much of everything else is forgotten.  A primary focus, maybe the main focus, then becomes one of ensuring a supply of paintballs as high, or higher, than the other guys’.  Participation rates, although still important, become a secondary focus.

Staffing a Paintball Field

Of all the jobs involved with running a paintball field, staffing and dealing with employees is probably the most difficult, in my opinion.  The number of staff we need at our field varies greatly.  For instance, if my business partner and myself are both present at the field when open for business and we only have a small group of players (which happens often on weekdays with small private bookings), we only need one extra staff member.  On the other hand if we have several games going on simultaneously with 150 or more players present at the field, we might need 12 or even more staff.

Therefore we need a sizable list of part time, on call employees to draw from.  We can’t promise these employees a lot of work, because there often is not a lot of work available for them.  Yet on occasion we do need them, desperately.  Luckily by offering discounts to employees, we have quite a few regular players that are willing to put in a shift now and then.

Like any business, we see a wide range of employees.  Some are great, others, not so much.  Those that don’t do so well, get called back very infrequently, or not at all.  Those that do really well, get called often.  It’s only natural.

One of our competitors advertises that they use only adult refs.  It’s an obvious dig at us, as we have both adult and teenage staff members.  And I’ve seen many a forum discussion over the years about how “kids” shouldn’t be allowed to ref.  Kids can’t handle altercations that take place at paintball fields and can’t stand up for themselves, is the main argument.  It’s a fair statement, IF those things are commonplace at those fields.  But they aren’t at our field.  The intensity level is low enough that altercations are rare.  We also have adult or senior refs on duty every day that could step in if necessary.

Could we have only adult staff?  Yeah probably, but the overall quality of the staff would slip seriously.  Why?  To get 12 or more refs for busy days, we need an extensive call list.  We usually have about 40 or so names on the list to draw from, but sometimes, that’s not enough, especially in the summertime, which also happens to be our busiest time.  Most competent, responsible adults have other full time employment as well as having other adult responsibilities.  Imagine trying to have 40 or more responsible adults on call to put in a shift at a paintball field every once in a while.  It would be nearly impossible.  Sure, you could probably find 40 irresponsible adults that might be willing to show up now and then, but who wants them?

On the other hand, the younger teenage staff we have to draw from is quite extensive.  They are also eager, at least many of them.  For many it’s their first job and coupled with discounts on playing the game they love, they usually try quite hard.  They are often in better physical shape, meaning they can run to paintchecks much quicker.

Some of our younger refs over the years have stayed with us to become adult refs, but most move on to bigger and better things, which is what I expect them to do.  If they are good, eager teenage employees, then chances are they are going to become responsible energetic adults.  They aren’t going to stick around working at a paintball field when there is so much more out there waiting for them.

Therefore, when a paintball field advertises that they have only adult employees, then my radar goes on alert and I wonder how good the overall staffing is.  Unless the field has very little business and needs very few refs, my intuition tells me that some of those “adult” refs may not necessarily be stellar employees.  By not discriminating by age, we have the ability to attract and keep more good staff.  That’s the way I see it anyway.