paintball and the X-Games

[Ninjeff]

I was watching the X-Games yesterday, amazed at how far they had come since the first one back in 94. When i was a teenager, the X-games were something i really looked forward too. It was a summer staple. Something me, and my friends would count the days too, and then all hang out at each others house to watch.

I stopped watching about teh time i turned 18 and graduated (1998) and havent tuned in since. No real reason, just life and growing up.

Still, i enjoyed watching them all day yesterday.....but i asked my self...where is paintball in this?

After all, i was watching RALLY style racing on the X-Games. Something i never thought i'd see, but something that fit the "extreme" aspect of what the XGames are all about. Sports that arent part of the "norm" as it were.

Still, after watching that i wondered why paintball never made the push into the X-Games. Its a perfect match for it. Shows to the right demographic, fits the "life style" and shows exactly what the games are all about.

At first i wondered if it was the "team aspect" of it, as most x-game sports are individual based. But then i remembered rally racing...or any car sport...is about as "team based" as you could get.

So thats not it.

Popularity?

Nope, more people play paintball than skateboard, roller blade, bmx, or whatever.

So what is it?

The X-Games gave cred to A LOT of sports that society previously "shunned". Just read down the list.......prior to 94 when they started how many people heard of Tony Hawk? Dave Mirra, Travis Pastrona (sp?) and the list goes on and on and on.

The X-Game producers are even used to, dare i say good at, filming sports that are difficult to film. They've always doen a good job of explaining things to the average joe too.

So why NOT have paintball in there? As an industry it could ONLY help. And as a sport looking to gain respect and cred as a real sport, with REAL athletes, the X-Games seem to be just what we need.


Thoughts?

[DevilMan]

hmmmmm..... My issue like most things is when there is alot of $$$ involved in winning then there is more $$$ used in cheating.

I like college games. The cheating may happen but they don't often get MILLIONS of dollars to do it. And I like the BMW Boxer Cup. Everyone gets the same bike and the race is from the rider not the bike or what mods his crew did to it.

I would LOVE to see paintball in the X games. But I really think it'd be better for the sport as a whole to have the markers given to them in a solid mode where they can't mod them and such. Make it a LEVEL field all the way around. That's what I prefer...

But that's me. I find honor in winning with honor. Cheating to win just ain't worth it.

DM

[Ninjeff]

agreed, but marker tech aside, i was never under the impression that the X-Games had big winnings. I could be wrong.....


Still, its our best alternative to the way things are done currently. Not to mention, paintball is a worldwide sport, so i could see it being done more for the "prestige" than $$$.

On purely the business end, the X-Games reach WAY more millions of people than anything paintball does now. Think of what the X-Games did for skateboarding. Before the games, damn near no one considered it a sport, and it had just as many stereo types as paintball. Now a days parents (well most) will consider it just as mainstream as baseball. And havinga kid that skates is the norm.

Think of all the millions it would reach. Even without a prize purse, the sponsers would do well fielding team that gets gold. Take the Vans shoe company for example, before the X-Games they were a small niche manufacturer of shoes, and now dam near everyone wears them, whether they skate of not.

A small example, but a good one.

Take Dynasty or the Ironmen put them on the field against some of the worlds best teams (Legion, Joy Division etc) and play to the drama and athletesism that it takes to play paintball. Make it X-Ball format, and get some good announcers that understand the game of paintball. Dont show the games live, but show them on a delay. Get a reasonably good directer, to "cut" the footage showing the key plays and tell people HOW they were key plays. None of this is terribly hard, and people would watch it. Especially the target crwod of teh X-Games.
The way i see it paintballs main draw back (lack of focus) is relatively easy to over come if you show the games on a delay allowing you (the director) to make sure to put in what is key and people will watch. As a sport its not hard to understand, and easy to watch once you know what to watch for.


They could do it.


Actually, I could do it if they let me. ;)


::edit:: and you can be pretty sure the X-Game officials will run a MUCH tighter ship than officials hired by the league, and indeed, the Companies that put on tournys now.

[d4m4don3]

Most of the x-games sports are individual competitions and paintball being a team sport adds dificulty to filming the game. You can't focus on the game like in football or basketball, it looks more like an RTS or FPS game. Isn't this why paintball hasn't made it in the x-games, I know there were attempts in the past to make it so. The past nppl tournaments that were shown on espn were good, but I think they only made sense to the guys that like paintball. :(

[Mime]

^^^ unfortunatly he is right. When i saw the paintball tournements on TV i had no idea what was going on ( previous to when i started playing) guys would sprint to a ballon and start firing. questions were running through my head like
" wait, that trigger is oversized"
"whats with the big buldging thing ontop"
" were's the hockey puck?"
"if your missing that much you must seriously suck"
"dude. crouch jump him!"
" wait what happend to the QB?"
"is there a net? and end zone?"
"weres the yard markings?"
"Hey he's off side!! ref, stop the play!"


I had no idea, untill I learned about the points and why they moved to certain spots why they dumped 3 pods into an open area. I was totaly lost.

"Why dont they build a fort with all those ballons?"

[sffudapparel]

Most of the x-games sports are individual competitions and paintball being a team sport adds dificulty to filming the game. You can't focus on the game like in football or basketball, it looks more like an RTS or FPS game. Isn't this why paintball hasn't made it in the x-games, I know there were attempts in the past to make it so. The past nppl tournaments that were shown on espn were good, but I think they only made sense to the guys that like paintball. :(


Gotta agree with that. I was thinking about this watching the xgames too. But here's the thing, X games is about pushing yourself. Every year you see something new, innovative at the x games. That doesn't happen in paintball.. In comparison with all the stuff in the x games, paintball looks pretty boring to see a guy standing there shoot 500 paintballs vs. a motocross guy jumping a 70ft gap doing a KOD backflip. Paintball doesn't fit that at all unfortunately.

The x games have come a long way. I loved watching them every year. I've been a bmx guy for many years, and I'm kinda sick of seeing tailwhips as the only non flip or spin trick in park. It also sucks that they got rid of bmx dirt. Vert guys still rule though. Motocross is insane, I don't know half the new skateboarders in street, and rally is pretty dang on cool to see.

[MX48]

The only reason Rally Car Racing is in the X-games is because of Pastrana. In the producers opinions (and they are pobably right), he is the biggest individual draw of the games. Consequently you can't really include it as getting in there on it's own merits since it was included specifically for Pastrana. Notice the lack of other Rally Car drivers there.

Ken Block in the finals, Dave Mirra in the semis? To me the thing was really a joke and set up for Pastrana to have something to win.

My point is Paintball doesn't have that one personality that many extreme sports fans know.

MX48

[B-Pow]

It is almost impossible to film.

It is boring as all heck...even for players. I tried watching NPPL games on their live web feed...several times. It is generally boring, even the "fast games" tend to run slow by most "exciting sport" standards (well aside from baseball that game moves at a crawl on a good day). Even if you know what is going on, you're watching the build ups for the big moves the positioning for the final push....it's like watching NASCAR for the crashes...sometimes even with all the build it might not happen.

If you do try to cut out the slow stuff...what you're left with will make very little sence. As the really impressive moves are mostly set up long before they happen...and it would feel almost like reading the climax of a mistery novel without the buildup for those who know what is going on.

Long story short paintball is a "sport" that is fun to play but not really designed for spectators.

[Miltonyz]

My buddies and I have talked about this before and the consensus is that paintball is boring to watch. It's one of the most exciting games I've ever played but watching meh. Most fields play the same way game after game. The only excitement comes when a player makes a big move or does a bunker run. The rest of the time it's guys crouched behind their bunkers firing at air or the inch of target their opponent gives them.

[sandfreestyle]

Long story short paintball is a "sport" that is fun to play but not really designed for spectators.
This is all too true. There is pretty much no "WOW" factor in watching paintball. People who don't know anything about the sports at the X Games just want to sit down and see something that is totally crazy and pretty much only possible in a video game. Take the motorcycle back flip that Carrey Hart did years ago, no one even dreamed of doing it cause it was "impossible" and insane to even think about it. Now there is double backs, KOD flips, 360 flips, under flips, body variales, etc. People see that and think "I can't believe that is possible". Stuff like that just doesn't happen in paintball.

[ThePixelGuru]

Yeah, I think people that have been saying paintball isn't as instantly exciting to the average viewer as motorcycles flipping around or rally cars flying all over the track hit the nail on the head. Laning with 15bps ramping just doesn't make as much immediate sense or instill that "wow!" feeling like watching a guy land a double backflip on a dirtbike does.

That being said, I think it's still possible to make paintball watchable and exciting. I bet an experienced film crew (with proper gear and camera setups) could capture enough good footage that a good editing team could cut down each 5 minute game into a 1 minute detailing the major moves, plays and strategies each team makes. If you cut out the segments where both teams just shoot cover fire at each other for 30 seconds or more I think you could make paintball quite watchable without losing too much of the detail and strategy of each game.

Think about a show like Wipeout - most of it is just people lamely falling off obstacles. They take 10 minute obstacle course runs and condense them to a minute or two - quite watchable, and most of the stuff you lose is pointless boring footage like someone swimming back to the obstacle they fell off of. What they're left with is the gist of the run, packed full of exciting bits like people getting popped in the face by motorized boxing gloves. If you show a minute-long summary of each game people are going to see big moves, run-throughs, bunkering, bunker slides and guys pinching out the other team with great angles as they move up. Even if you don't know much about paintball, that seems pretty exciting, interesting and not too hard to follow.

[usagi_tetsu]

They've tried and tried, over the years, to show paintball like they show the more traditional sports (baseball, football, whatnot) and, for the most part, it's failed utterly to draw a following. I mean, out of even us paintball players, how many of us record NPPL on ESPN on our DVR's? I don't, 'cause WATCHING paintball is boring as hell, while PLAYING paintball is fun and almost anyone can play the sport to some degree. Most of the reason that paintball is so boring to watch is that it's not terribly videogenic (the paint is nearly invisible and the action is spread all over the field all at the same time) and the protective gear makes individuals very hard to distinguish, so the big names are hard to follow during play. Add onto that the fact that John and Jane Q Public have no earthly idea what paintball is, much less what is going on in a pro-level speedball match.

So speedball (and woodsball, for that matter) is both hard to watch and very confusing to the public at large. How do we, as a sport/industry, go about changing those things? My $.02 on the matter - emulate the UFC. The UFC in the early part of it's existence had garnered a bad name for itself (too bloody, too violent, too out of control) and had also only been watched by the hard core fans. Today, the UFC is one of the most popular shows on the Spike network, and has competitors on Vs. and one of the major syndicates (NBC or CBS, can't remember which). How did the UFC do this? First off, they brought the inherent violence in the sport under control by creating weight classes and creating (and enforcing) rules to protect the health of both competitors. Now, paintball doesn't suffer from a bad image of "too violent", pro-level paintball, if anything, suffers from an image of "too much cheating". Of course, only paintball players are really aware of it right now, but it will have to be something we look to correct in the future. Now, to solve the second problem (bringing cage fighting to the public at large's understanding), the UFC created the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, and it worked very well. It both instructed and informed the unknowledgeable public what is involved in an MMA cage fight, and it also gave an insight to the fighter's personalities, fighting styles, and made people interested in the fighters as people. Before you jump up and down on top of me, yes, there is a paintball reality show on TV already (and in its second season, no less), but have you seen it? It's confusing (even to paintball players), not terribly informative, and spends way more time showing games than they do focusing on the players themselves. So we need our own paintball based reality show (NPPL's Next Pro Team, or something like that, make it a competition as well as informational to get the public at large invested in it), but something better made than the drek we have on now - spend more time on the players and on instructing the public, less time on talking "gangsta" and showing game play that no one understands anyway.

That will take care of whether or not the public at large is interested in watching paintball, but it still doesn't take care of the basic fact that most paintball competitions these days are screamingly video unfriendly. The format of even 5on5 is such a large area to cover (each participant is shooting at up to 3 opponents, so you're trying to watch over 150 different angles, at least) that going with smaller team sizes makes more sense. Now I've even seen arguments to take it down so far as one on one play, but I think a 3-man format would be more palatable - fast paced, narrower field of play to film, and the players themselves are easier to keep track of (so you can keep an eye on that fave player of yours). 3-man doesn't make our industry happy (more people on the field equals more paint sales! gotta sell that paint!), but is a step in the right direction, I think. The other major hurdle is either slowing down the paintballs so we can see it with modern cameras, or just bite the bullet and buy higher speed cameras and special, high-visibility paint to make it more apparent to the folks at home who is doing what to who. And you're still going to need a lot of them, both up on towers to cover a larger field view and down on the field in the hands of high-speed (read that as "willing to take a couple for the shot") cameramen to show "over the shoulder" and "player's view" shots, which is going to cost more than a little bit.


Sorry for the rant, been thinking about this subject for a while. Oh, and to tie it all back into "Why no paintball on X Games?" - 'cause in it's current form, it's boring as a spectator sport.

[robnix]

It's the rules that make it suck for TV. The rules are too simple and make each game nothing more than elimination with a symbolic flag run at the end. Do this and it'll be more fun to watch:

http://automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=213484

Basic rules that need to be tweaked.

1) The game is started with a ball in the center of the field. Both teams start from their end of the field.
2) The idea is to get the ball through the other teams goal.
3) Multiple sized goals can be used for different scoring amounts.
4) When you have the ball you can't shoot, but you can't drop your marker either.
5) You're only out if you get shot out.
6) Players can respawn 10 seconds after getting shot out, and only from designated respawn spots scattered on the edges of the field.
7) Respawn spots are team based, you can't respawn from the other teams respawn spot.
8) The game clock is constant, only stopping to reset the ball after a score.
9) When points are scored, game action stops and restarts when both teams are back in place.
10) You have to be in front of a line CLOSE to the goals to score. No "long balling it" or "icing".

edit:

Throwing the ball is legal in any direction. When you have the ball you can't shoot though. The idea is to promote teamwork. You would need teammates to help you down the field. We've all played some variation of "Protect the President" in the woods.

Getting shot with the ball. - There's a few ways to deal with it from implementing a distance rule on passes to a timed penalty for doing anything other than dropping the ball when you get hit. The refs would need to pay attention to the runner on this one.

Longballing - There's a goal at each end of the field. Maybe more than one with different point values. There would be a line you would have to cross before you can throw at the goal. "Accidental" shots would simply not count, and the other team would get the ball.

Now you have a real objective, and you can't win simply by eliminating the other team. The game is more interesting to watch because you're not focusing on people shooting each other, you're focusing on the ball and people trying to score points with it.

[usagi_tetsu]

It's the rules that make it suck for TV. The rules are too simple and make each game nothing more than elimination with a symbolic flag run at the end. Do this and it'll be more fun to watch:

http://automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=213484

Basic rules that need to be tweaked.

1) The game is started with a ball in the center of the field. Both teams start from their end of the field.
2) The idea is to get the ball through the other teams goal.
3) Multiple sized goals can be used for different scoring amounts.
4) When you have the ball you can't shoot, but you can't drop your marker either.
5) You're only out if you get shot out.
6) Players can respawn 10 seconds after getting shot out, and only from designated respawn spots scattered on the edges of the field.
7) Respawn spots are team based, you can't respawn from the other teams respawn spot.
8) The game clock is constant, only stopping to reset the ball after a score.
9) When points are scored, game action stops and restarts when both teams are back in place.
10) You have to be in front of a line CLOSE to the goals to score. No "long balling it" or "icing".

edit:

Throwing the ball is legal in any direction. When you have the ball you can't shoot though. The idea is to promote teamwork. You would need teammates to help you down the field. We've all played some variation of "Protect the President" in the woods.

Getting shot with the ball. - There's a few ways to deal with it from implementing a distance rule on passes to a timed penalty for doing anything other than dropping the ball when you get hit. The refs would need to pay attention to the runner on this one.

Longballing - There's a goal at each end of the field. Maybe more than one with different point values. There would be a line you would have to cross before you can throw at the goal. "Accidental" shots would simply not count, and the other team would get the ball.

Now you have a real objective, and you can't win simply by eliminating the other team. The game is more interesting to watch because you're not focusing on people shooting each other, you're focusing on the ball and people trying to score points with it.

This is a good idea, but you'd have to have a much larger field than what they generally play speedball on now. Specifically, the 10 second rule won't work if any player can shoot all the way across the field as no one would be able to move far enough down the field to score.

For example, my team rolls over our opponents and marks out all 5 opposing players, and my team's ball carrier starts sprinting for the goal. At about the same time he gets there, all of our opponents roll back out of their assigned res points, and because the field is as short as it is, they light up our ball carrier and half of the team. You need a field large enough that you can gain enough time (because who shoots the opposing team out all at the same moment, honestly?) to move the ball down the field without immediately coming under fire from a newly resurrected opposing player.

Other than that, great idea.

[robnix]

This is a good idea, but you'd have to have a much larger field than what they generally play speedball on now. Specifically, the 10 second rule won't work if any player can shoot all the way across the field as no one would be able to move far enough down the field to score.

For example, my team rolls over our opponents and marks out all 5 opposing players, and my team's ball carrier starts sprinting for the goal. At about the same time he gets there, all of our opponents roll back out of their assigned res points, and because the field is as short as it is, they light up our ball carrier and half of the team. You need a field large enough that you can gain enough time (because who shoots the opposing team out all at the same moment, honestly?) to move the ball down the field without immediately coming under fire from a newly resurrected opposing player.

Other than that, great idea.
It would definitely need not just a larger field , and it would need at least 7-10 man teams as well. Bunker setup would also be critical. Large urban fields would be ideal.

[Spider-TW]

I mean, out of even us paintball players, how many of us record NPPL on ESPN on our DVR's? I don't, 'cause WATCHING paintball is boring as hell, while PLAYING paintball is fun and almost anyone can play the sport to some degree. Most of the reason that paintball is so boring to watch is that it's not terribly videogenic (the paint is nearly invisible and the action is spread all over the field all at the same time) and the protective gear makes individuals very hard to distinguish, so the big names are hard to follow during play. Add onto that the fact that John and Jane Q Public have no earthly idea what paintball is, much less what is going on in a pro-level speedball match.
This never stopped golf (I don't know why ;) ). I used to get a kick out of the camera panning up in the air to follow a drive. Maybe the cameraman could see it, but I just see sky (same thing I see a lot of the times I play too). However, I can sometimes tell what is printed on the paint coming at me.

The protective gear doesn't stop football, either.

Besides the visibility of the action, I think it will just take a while for the number of people that have played to build up the audience. I think this is why drag racing seems to pull a small TV audience; fewer people have actually seen one up close. Once you've been there, you can appreciate the sounds and action a lot more. I used to hate baseball on TV until I watched a good game live. With a little more production and formatting (TV rules) they should be able to put up something entertaining.