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What a trip down memory lane! Growing up as a teenager in the late-90's and early 00's, I went deep into paintball. A lot of friends of mine today kind of chu

What a trip down memory lane! Growing up as a teenager in the late-90's and early 00's, I went deep into paintball. A lot of friends of mine today kind of chuckle when I tell them I used to travel and play in a national tournament series, but what a blast it was! There's great history here. The big American league at the time I got involved was called the National Professional Paintball League (NPPL). The flagship competitions were 10v10 capture the flag, and they also had 5v5. The NPPL at the time was broken down into Pro, Amateur A, Amateur B, and Novice, with 8 or so tournaments per year culminating in the World Cup in Florida. There was a pretty exciting ecosystem at the time, with tons of exciting paintball marker innovation happening as markers were making the switch to electronics for the first time with the WDP Angel (a European company), the Smart Parts Shocker, and others to follow. Not to mention the mechanics of the old non-electronic markers like the WGP Autococker and the Automag. The geeky bits of which would absolutely fascinate all the technical minds of Hacker News. (for example, check out some of the cut-out animations of the mechanics of some of these old paintball markers. Customizing and tuning and adjusting were a total blast back in the day. Way cooler than pogs! http://www.deadlywind.com/paintball-animation http://www.deadlywind.com/paintball-animation)

cagenut 12y ago
most of what I've since learned to see as 'coke vs. pepsi' arguments I first learned in the form of 'mags vs. cockers'. vi vs. emacs, chef vs. puppet, mysql vs. postgres, it turns out for the rest of my career the arguments would sound almost exactly the same as teenage boys arguing about play guns with the nouns swapped out.
chrisan 12y ago
I was deep into paintball too in high school and college, nothing national but traveled with the university club to other universities. It's been a while since I played any serious paintball, but to me the biggest downside at the time was the arms race. Obviously the tippman full auto was banned from competitive play, but after that it was pretty much up to your wallet. I remember getting my Bob Long Autocoker and feeling invincible. Then some guys started showing up with Angels and holy crap I was intimidated. Compressed air vs CO2. Quality of paintballs. Even some of the gear with neoprene to give you a bit more 'bounce' it all added up. Paintball was the most fun when we started, everyone with a tippman rental. After our group started diverging on total spend it because obvious it was getting unfair. Eventually we all bought tippman pro carbines and required the same paintballs be used and all on CO2. Not getting CO2 freezing was part of your strategy! We had much more fun after we removed the arms race, even at the expense of not being able to tinker and customize. The Angel guys could go to pub games and light up the poor schleps if they wanted :P
- batbomb 12y ago
  For a while, we told all our friends they could only tippmanns, preferably just the 98 custom. Some trigger upgrades were allowed as well as any barrel, no e triggers. It was actually really good, since most people would end with relatively equal equipment, and people wouldn't get pissed off at the new guy going full auto.
- AVTizzle 12y ago
  That's awesome. Were you NCPA? Funny enough - when I was entering High School around 2002, paintball was in the middle of a big growth phase, and as part of it, the NCPA seemed to have enough traction that there almost seemed to be a chance that players might start to have a hope to get college scholarships to play ball. Definitely relate to you about the arms race. Though I enjoyed the tweaks to my Autococker including the Eclipse E-Frame, by the time I got out of the sport in '04 or '05, Intimidators and the DM series really took it to the limit. Technically they were "semi-auto" but were walkable up to 14-15 shots per second and in the X-Ball style play, people were literally going through cases of 2000 in single matches. Insane price ramp. Crazy to think it all happened within the span of a decade.
  - chrisan 12y ago
    Sadly no, NCPA wasn't around when I was playing. Looks like I _just_ missed it, though I'm not sure if my school was one of the original schools involved, so maybe I had no chance anyways. I hear you on the tinkering/tweaks, that was extremely satisfying.
  - tonyb 12y ago
    It is a small world. I was the president of The Ohio State paintball team for a few years. I also helped the NCPA with a website refresh back in the day. I would have never though that topic would come up on HN. I spent more money on paintball in college than I care to think about. I has one of the first "new" shockers. It was one of the first red ones, the serial number was below #50 if I remember correctly.
    - 12y ago
vcherubini 12y ago
I was deeply into it as well (though not at your level). I was so happy when a question I asked was printed in Action Pursuit Games (something like should I upgrade to nitro or stay with CO2?). Also, Automag all the way.
mikecuesta 12y ago
I too went deep into paintball back in the late -90's; it was one of the few 'sports' that I really took an affinity to. Unfortunately, I was shot in my left eye with the barrel being less than 3 feet away, leaving me legally blind in one eye. It was after a game and we all had our masks off. Being that my main skillset is/was design & web, it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Fortunately I've continued to build a great career relying on the vision of one eye. I've been approached a few times to speak out publicly on TV against the dangers of paintball, but have always declined. Just like anything in life, proper precautions are important and freak accidents will happen. I would love to play again one day, but it's probably not the best idea.
- aestra 12y ago
  Why did someone shoot you after the game? Was it an accident?
  - langseth 12y ago
    It happens, lax safety on and off the field and poor gun safety/trigger control. Keep your mask on at all times on the field and barrel bags on off the field, and accidents like this can't happen (source: I ref and play paintball every weekend). We kick people off the field for lifting their mask when they are on the field and ensure barrel bags go on before walking back into the staging area.
  - mikecuesta 12y ago
    Total accident. Many of us were all hanging out by the cars and one of the guns went off.
    - AVTizzle 12y ago
      Gosh that's brutal. Sorry to hear it man, glad to hear you're above it both professional and spiritually. I also feel bad for the person who's marker went off in your face. What a horrible guilt that must be.
Zenst 12y ago
I too was very much into paintball in the UK, great times. What kind of killed it for me was the introduction of semi-auto's and move away from pump action greats like the old Phantom, Sterling range etc. Found it got down to not how good you were but how much paint you could afford and with that, got silly. Limited paint/ammo tourneys were ok but still, the fun was lost and greatly shifted from skill to who could afford to spray the tree above you enough so you got taken out by Marshall as covered in dripping paint sadly :( Half the fun was me was tuning your gun and getting it sat just within legal limits and for that syphon tank with my Sterling silver was the best and would get 299, 298,299,299 crony shots, solid with very little variation of 1 or 2 FPS. That with barrel extension was really accurate and great range, but took work to get it that solid and consistent. Now somewhat easier and in many ways paintball markers technology wise surpassed real life guns in many many ways. Fun times.
- langseth 12y ago
  You may want to look into it again. Pump games and magfed is making a comeback.
- AVTizzle 12y ago
  That's awesome. I always respected the old stock games, though I never really got too far into it myself. Remember looking at Palmer Customs on the web?? Works of art. http://www.palmer-pursuit.com/ http://www.palmer-pursuit.com/
tbomb 12y ago
I'm still pretty into it, although I'm refereeing now on the national tournament series. Its far too expensive and time consuming to travel all around the country and play these events plus practicing each weekend (it's very competitive now, gone are the days of drinking at night and playing hungover). So reffing still allows me to travel to these events and see all of my friends still in the sport (now mostly other ref's or working in the industry at various companies). Plus I get to travel around the country with a group of good friends and still come home with a couple bucks, or at the very least a free vacation! The big American league now is the Paintball Sports Promotion (PSP) league, the flagship being 5v5 Race-To-7 format. Think very fast paced games and the first one to win 7 times wins the match. I believe that the NPPL is taking a hiatus for a year, if they come back at all, they've barely been able to stay afloat for a while now. From what I've heard it's been due to poor financial decision making on the leagues behalf. As far as the markers go, most of them are now based off of the Matrix or Intimidator designs from your link, with a couple using the Hollowpoint design (at least in the tournament series). They've also begun limiting the Rate of Fire in the PSP, being 10.2 shots per second in the professional divisions to remove any advantages of higher prices markers. All in all its still a pretty cool sport. I've met tons of great people through it, and many life-long friends. Hopefully it gets back to where it used to be in the early 00's, it's definitely been growing the last few years after the hit it took around 2008.
- AVTizzle 12y ago
  Hah this is awesome to hear. I love this discussion. >> The big American league now is the Paintball Sports Promotion (PSP) league, the flagship being 5v5 Race-To-7 format. Think very fast paced games and the first one to win 7 times wins the match. Really interesting. The season I stopped playing, NPPL split into NPPL 7-man, and PSP took the new format X-ball as their flagship, with 10 and 5 man on the side too. A question I have - from an outsiders perspective, it seems like the sport kind of died down around the time of the recession in 2008 or so. I feel like I stopped seeing as many of the publications on the shelfs at Barnes and Noble and such. Would you say that's the case? Or am I just an outsider now?

cagenut 12y ago

most of what I've since learned to see as 'coke vs. pepsi' arguments I first learned in the form of 'mags vs. cockers'. vi vs. emacs, chef vs. puppet, mysql vs. postgres, it turns out for the rest of my career the arguments would sound almost exactly the same as teenage boys arguing about play guns with the nouns swapped out.

chrisan 12y ago

I was deep into paintball too in high school and college, nothing national but traveled with the university club to other universities. It's been a while since I played any serious paintball, but to me the biggest downside at the time was the arms race. Obviously the tippman full auto was banned from competitive play, but after that it was pretty much up to your wallet. I remember getting my Bob Long Autocoker and feeling invincible. Then some guys started showing up with Angels and holy crap I was intimidated. Compressed air vs CO2. Quality of paintballs. Even some of the gear with neoprene to give you a bit more 'bounce' it all added up. Paintball was the most fun when we started, everyone with a tippman rental. After our group started diverging on total spend it because obvious it was getting unfair. Eventually we all bought tippman pro carbines and required the same paintballs be used and all on CO2. Not getting CO2 freezing was part of your strategy! We had much more fun after we removed the arms race, even at the expense of not being able to tinker and customize. The Angel guys could go to pub games and light up the poor schleps if they wanted :P

batbomb 12y ago
For a while, we told all our friends they could only tippmanns, preferably just the 98 custom. Some trigger upgrades were allowed as well as any barrel, no e triggers. It was actually really good, since most people would end with relatively equal equipment, and people wouldn't get pissed off at the new guy going full auto.
AVTizzle 12y ago
That's awesome. Were you NCPA? Funny enough - when I was entering High School around 2002, paintball was in the middle of a big growth phase, and as part of it, the NCPA seemed to have enough traction that there almost seemed to be a chance that players might start to have a hope to get college scholarships to play ball. Definitely relate to you about the arms race. Though I enjoyed the tweaks to my Autococker including the Eclipse E-Frame, by the time I got out of the sport in '04 or '05, Intimidators and the DM series really took it to the limit. Technically they were "semi-auto" but were walkable up to 14-15 shots per second and in the X-Ball style play, people were literally going through cases of 2000 in single matches. Insane price ramp. Crazy to think it all happened within the span of a decade.
- chrisan 12y ago
  Sadly no, NCPA wasn't around when I was playing. Looks like I _just_ missed it, though I'm not sure if my school was one of the original schools involved, so maybe I had no chance anyways. I hear you on the tinkering/tweaks, that was extremely satisfying.
- tonyb 12y ago
  It is a small world. I was the president of The Ohio State paintball team for a few years. I also helped the NCPA with a website refresh back in the day. I would have never though that topic would come up on HN. I spent more money on paintball in college than I care to think about. I has one of the first "new" shockers. It was one of the first red ones, the serial number was below #50 if I remember correctly.
  - 12y ago

vcherubini 12y ago

I was deeply into it as well (though not at your level). I was so happy when a question I asked was printed in Action Pursuit Games (something like should I upgrade to nitro or stay with CO2?). Also, Automag all the way.

mikecuesta 12y ago

I too went deep into paintball back in the late -90's; it was one of the few 'sports' that I really took an affinity to. Unfortunately, I was shot in my left eye with the barrel being less than 3 feet away, leaving me legally blind in one eye. It was after a game and we all had our masks off. Being that my main skillset is/was design & web, it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Fortunately I've continued to build a great career relying on the vision of one eye. I've been approached a few times to speak out publicly on TV against the dangers of paintball, but have always declined. Just like anything in life, proper precautions are important and freak accidents will happen. I would love to play again one day, but it's probably not the best idea.

aestra 12y ago
Why did someone shoot you after the game? Was it an accident?
- langseth 12y ago
  It happens, lax safety on and off the field and poor gun safety/trigger control. Keep your mask on at all times on the field and barrel bags on off the field, and accidents like this can't happen (source: I ref and play paintball every weekend). We kick people off the field for lifting their mask when they are on the field and ensure barrel bags go on before walking back into the staging area.
- mikecuesta 12y ago
  Total accident. Many of us were all hanging out by the cars and one of the guns went off.
  - AVTizzle 12y ago
    Gosh that's brutal. Sorry to hear it man, glad to hear you're above it both professional and spiritually. I also feel bad for the person who's marker went off in your face. What a horrible guilt that must be.

Zenst 12y ago

I too was very much into paintball in the UK, great times. What kind of killed it for me was the introduction of semi-auto's and move away from pump action greats like the old Phantom, Sterling range etc. Found it got down to not how good you were but how much paint you could afford and with that, got silly. Limited paint/ammo tourneys were ok but still, the fun was lost and greatly shifted from skill to who could afford to spray the tree above you enough so you got taken out by Marshall as covered in dripping paint sadly :( Half the fun was me was tuning your gun and getting it sat just within legal limits and for that syphon tank with my Sterling silver was the best and would get 299, 298,299,299 crony shots, solid with very little variation of 1 or 2 FPS. That with barrel extension was really accurate and great range, but took work to get it that solid and consistent. Now somewhat easier and in many ways paintball markers technology wise surpassed real life guns in many many ways. Fun times.

langseth 12y ago
You may want to look into it again. Pump games and magfed is making a comeback.
AVTizzle 12y ago
That's awesome. I always respected the old stock games, though I never really got too far into it myself. Remember looking at Palmer Customs on the web?? Works of art. http://www.palmer-pursuit.com/ http://www.palmer-pursuit.com/

tbomb 12y ago

I'm still pretty into it, although I'm refereeing now on the national tournament series. Its far too expensive and time consuming to travel all around the country and play these events plus practicing each weekend (it's very competitive now, gone are the days of drinking at night and playing hungover). So reffing still allows me to travel to these events and see all of my friends still in the sport (now mostly other ref's or working in the industry at various companies). Plus I get to travel around the country with a group of good friends and still come home with a couple bucks, or at the very least a free vacation! The big American league now is the Paintball Sports Promotion (PSP) league, the flagship being 5v5 Race-To-7 format. Think very fast paced games and the first one to win 7 times wins the match. I believe that the NPPL is taking a hiatus for a year, if they come back at all, they've barely been able to stay afloat for a while now. From what I've heard it's been due to poor financial decision making on the leagues behalf. As far as the markers go, most of them are now based off of the Matrix or Intimidator designs from your link, with a couple using the Hollowpoint design (at least in the tournament series). They've also begun limiting the Rate of Fire in the PSP, being 10.2 shots per second in the professional divisions to remove any advantages of higher prices markers. All in all its still a pretty cool sport. I've met tons of great people through it, and many life-long friends. Hopefully it gets back to where it used to be in the early 00's, it's definitely been growing the last few years after the hit it took around 2008.

AVTizzle 12y ago
Hah this is awesome to hear. I love this discussion. >> The big American league now is the Paintball Sports Promotion (PSP) league, the flagship being 5v5 Race-To-7 format. Think very fast paced games and the first one to win 7 times wins the match. Really interesting. The season I stopped playing, NPPL split into NPPL 7-man, and PSP took the new format X-ball as their flagship, with 10 and 5 man on the side too. A question I have - from an outsiders perspective, it seems like the sport kind of died down around the time of the recession in 2008 or so. I feel like I stopped seeing as many of the publications on the shelfs at Barnes and Noble and such. Would you say that's the case? Or am I just an outsider now?