The Wild World of TB!

As promised here is part two of the fact that the national scenario promoter is indeed a dying breed. So let's jump back into it, shall we?

I had some interesting emails from people, mostly telling me how wrong I am on this subject. But let's take a quick gander or a step back in time, the year is 2004, and the scene is scenario paintball across the country. Who were putting on national games? Well you had MXS still travelling the country and hitting their fields like Realms of Ruin, Wildfire Paintball, EMR, Sherwood Forest, Herbies and Splat Brothers to name a few, along with the Texas Throwdown as the end of the year event in Texas. Black Cat Productions was all over in the Southwest and the West Coast not to mention in Ohio and other places. Wayne was still in Florida but doing games in NY and the occasional game in other places, MPP games was doing games on the East and West Coast including the Last Blast West which was supposed to be the end of the year game for the west coast. And Viper was doing games in FL and a few other places but had pulled back mostly to Texas from KS and a few other places.

So let's take a look at 2009 shall we? Wayne has pulled back to his field in FL, MPP games has given up on the West Coast and is simply are 4 fields in the SE, Black Cat has 'retired' to his field in OH and MXS is out of business. All that leaves is one promoter and he tried to fill in the vacuum that all these prompters left when they pulled out of the scene. But the truth is the reason that even he isn't making a success of it, is that as pointed out before, there is nothing that the national promoter offers that the smaller more regional promoter can't or doesn't offer.

Back in the day, you needed dedicated radios to allow your refs to be able to handle the game properly, you needed an ‘Ultimate’ who understood the rules and had a good relationship with the producer to be able to get the people who had never reffed before into line as well as maintain the feel of the event from field to field. These were VHF and UHF radios because FRS were known for having issues, however these days the GMRS radios are better and you can actually get VHF and UHF radios pretty cheap. On top of that there are now teams that do reffing for whatever reasons that they have and so even the ultimate isn’t as needed as more and more people take on the role of head ref.

Back in the day you got a unique patch and a badge that gave you something to collect. Too many people, myself included, saved those patches and put them on jackets and saved their badges on lanyards, but as the price margins grew those things left pretty quickly. Most people will tell you today that the people playing the regional games could care less about patches or badges. Some of the smaller promoters still do it, but gone are the days of the collectable player badges. Hence the smaller promoter who does it and can afford it makes players happy, but the smaller promoter who tells people that he is saving them money by not doing it, makes other people just as happy.

Back in the day, the formula was a secret. Sure you could play enough games and figure out what a take and hold was vs. a patrol, but to be able to determine either via pre-made mission masters or on the fly mission masters and it ‘flow’ properly required some inside knowledge of the game that only the select few players knew. These days pretty much anyone and everyone can run a scenario game; in fact some might not even run it as a scenario game. You have mil-sim game, Big Game, RTS, Progressive Missions, VIP format, and more. People have made all kinds of changes in the name of making the game better and in the end it has made the puddle so muddy that no one knows what they are going to get anymore.

Will missions matter? How do you reward the run and guns? Everyone hates spies/agents, do you keep them? What about 3rd factions, people these days assume that there has to be a 3rd faction to have a scenario game. What about insertion windows or is the command base allowed to be dropped for points? Are the commander and XO worth points if eliminated? They have blended methods of the above all in some inane attempt to tell you that the game is fresh and new and moving forward. But in the end is it?

They (local promoters and regional promoters) have for the most part caught on the fact that scenario paintball players are fickle, probably the most fickle group and if you can capitalize on that you can indeed make some money from these guys. But if you can indeed convince them that your local games are as good or just passable enough then they won’t travel. There are more regional teams than ever in some places and these guys are powerhouses in their regions. However very few of them travel out of their regions and even less play different promoters within their regions. Brand loyalty has been enforced either via human nature or economics and that isn’t the best thing for the national promoters.

Oh there have been attempts (Living Legends) to bring some notion of travel out by having celebrity commanders and paintball legends at the event. However the people that come are either hardcore scenario (and they are disappointed by the cavalier attitudes held by the legends) or they are there to party hence leading to the frustration of the hardcore players. The issue is that people aren’t going to travel to party with Blue, Red or anyone else for that matter more than once and then when they see what they get locally and do the math; it simply shows that it is cheaper to stay home. Even more so when Blue travels as does Red and a lot of these other celebrities. But in the end there really is no need to travel unless you (you being the individual or team) want to.

I have developed a reputation nationwide by playing nationwide, I have played in CA and the southwest, I have played in the SE and in the NE and also Texas and the Midwest. My teams have done the same, what teams? Well I was a Mayberry Marauder and I have been on Blitzkrieg and on Thunderstruck. This has allowed me to recruit teams when I come into an area or to know who the ‘teams’ that are the big fish are. Most people don’t care about the game enough for that, they simply want it to be as good in their area as it is everywhere else. But as the national promoters fall by the wayside, that will not happen for awhile.

But what will happen? The smaller promoters will invariably learn their craft and some people will travel to their games. They will infect them to other fields in other areas and the promoters will go back to travelling. Some may do one or two fields out of their region or maybe more, will there ever again be a national promoter? Who knows, I doubt it, but stranger things have happened. In the end, promoters do what they want, and like the paintball industry don’t seem to care about anyone but themselves. The ones who need the money to live are worse than most, since they want to lay the blame on anything that affects their bottom line. What this does however is allow smart and opportunistic people to manipulate those people into giving them what they want to make them feel better. Be that certain players or teams not allowed at the event all the way up to changing the format or the MOS types. But that is for another story and another time.

So again will 2010 be the year teams decide to travel to different promoters or fields? I know Thunderstruck will be, stay tuned here if you want to play with us or take a shot at the title let us know.