Storytelling and the paintball soul
I know, I know . . . 2 posts in 1 day? Unheard of!!!
So I was reading through my list of industry blogs last night (current favorites are View from the Deadbox and The Paintball Agenda) when I tripped across an excellent story about where the paintball industry is in terms of telling the story and history of our sport. This is my response (it’s also a comment on that blog). Read this first for context: Part 1 of the story, Part 2 of the story.
Don Saavedra hit the nail on the head with this story, and it’s something that I have thought about a lot. If you’ve been around me at all, you’ve heard me tell stories from back-in-the-day. As a guy that’s played competitively since 93, I remember all the old stories . . . and no one tells them anymore. At least not to a mass audience. I agree with Don . . . that the history of our sport, and the stories that shape its soul are important to the future of the sport.
However, I think part of the problem lies in the media, but not necessarily in the way Don describes it. Mainstream sports have always had video (at least over the last 30 or so years), so it’s easy for Bob Costas to point to classic Pete Rose video and compare it to video of the slugger-of-the-moment. Paintball doesn’t have the library of tapes that most sports have; we don’t have ESPN Classic . . . just dusty magazines talking about how someone smashed a 7oz tank over someone else’s face at a Lively event. Or how Bob Long was walking fields in Chicago with a dixie cup on a stick finding the best crawling lanes. Or how the A’s were the first to get caught cheating on tape during the Reno open (I think ‘Shock was shooting typhoons back then). Or 2E and his crazy tattoos. Or Oliver Lang being the youngest pro player. But you are right . . . there are living legends in this sport, but no one is telling the story in a way that captivates today’s internet audience. Moreover, there’s no real history when it comes to paintball media . . . there’s no meta discussion. Dawn and Bill had a great website back then (and still do), and there were a bunch of magazines that covered events, but there really wasn’t anyone constantly putting the OMG things that happen in paintball into the greater context.
I don’t know the answer. I don’t think kids have the patience to watch old Trauma Head videos (Even though Danny Manning is the man). Why? Look at videos from the early 2000’s . . . There’s a marked difference between how videos are captured now. People have learned how to capture the right moments now. Additionally, with a game that has changed so much in the last 10 years, how can we compare the past to the present? Baseball has been baseball forever (minus the asterisk). Football and soccer are the same. Paintball continues to have growing pains, and as such will have a hard time chronically its past in the digital media of today and the future.
I suppose having a conversation like this across blogs will help, but the better question is: does our audience care? I hope so . . . I’d love nothing more than to see a MWAG video come out every year.
Finally, if you go to the PB Agenda articles and check out some classic pictures . . .I enjoyed the pic of Robbo being all skinny next to Jerry Braun 
I laughed.
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Thanks for the comments, Brian. One of the things I tried to bring up in Pt. 1 was how non-lucrative it has been for people to film paintball, and could explain why we just don’t have a whole lot of historical footage of our game. I think the only fix we can make is to do whatever we can to keep telling our current story. Lift the movers and shakers of paintball NOW with good coverage so the next generation of pro players will have been brought up on stories of their idols. To do so will take a concerted effort of everyone. Nobody in the industry, especially these days, is going to fund such an endeavor with out a big enough audience. Can we have that today? Can we get enough people, from all parts of this sport, to sit down long enough to hear and care about the stories? I really don’t know.
I could tell you some stories Mr Warner. Some of the stuff that even pre-dates your tourny play with us would probably sicken the kids that only know the speed play of today. Hell, most of the kids playing with you now and thinking they are badasses would be curled up in the fetal position and whimpering if they were on the field in the woods with Crazy Billy, Rob, and the Crows rolling over their rudy poo asses. I wish people could go back and understand just how good teams were like the Headhunters back in the day when money could not buy you skill.
with love,
primetime
LOL…Headhunters…
I remember back in the day of the SWOPP league they were nothing but dirty cheaters. You could color their masks with paint and they would disappear and come back clean. They would always try to start fights when they would lose or get accused of cheating….
Maybe starting 20-30 yrds out of the starting box helped them win…
Headhunters good…I laugh at that.
Well part of the game does involve cheating. I played in that league for years and no one got head starts on the break. Did they wipe paint if the refs were poor? Damn right they did. I will tell you right now if the refs are bad that any player in any tournament will be performing trickery….myself included. Did you know they were one of the best teams in the world in the late 80′s? They did not really adapt to the changes in the game the way some of the other teams from that era did. Teams like Bad Company, the Ironmen, Lords of Discipline (you might know them as Aftershock) and several others adapted quite well as the game changed.
I guess it was before your time.
I know they were good in the late 80′s. That was not before my time by that far.
Honestly they would rather sit around drink beer, smoke pot, and try to fight any team that could beat them rather than work on getting better. I guess that is what happens when you get old and you see the game passing you buy.
I remember one field that was a giant hill. Up top there was plenty of woods next to the horse field. At the bottom there was a make shift “speedball” setup with pallets. After getting beat and not winning the SWOPP League that year, they tore it down after that. To make the field more fair…
well headhunters were the headhunters they were pissed off all the time i can remember playin way back in the day with them when i was probably 14 years old ha. hey if you still read these comments idk if we ever met but i played for the paintball shop up in bright indiana a few years back i played for tom cochran and his son josh. tom was a good man and i was also real good friends with mike marine too. i played countless days and years of paintball with them. and pete too. with them two passing its been hard to even look at a paintball gun. but i think its just something i have to do and get back into it. shoot me an email if u get the chance id like to see when practices are and or whatever else i need to get back to the sport i miss it alot. thanks sir
Well Warner if you remember that iron man vhs i brought into reading, paintball has been very lightly documented in video .