the survival message was mixed. An outdoorsman, a forester, won the game, but his strategy was totally passive. Avoid other players and focus instead on the goal – capturing the flags without getting shot. (He may have won employing this non-interactive strategy, but one wonders if he had any fun this way.)
As a whole, the players in this first game said they had a terrific time. Hayes Noel has often been quoted as saying, “The illusion of danger was so real, it was the most exciting thing I had ever done. Every cell in my body was turned on.”
The more Hayes Noel and Charles Gaines and Bob Gurnsey thought about it, the more they realized that shooting paintballs could become a game that people all over the U.S. would enjoy playing, and they soon decided they were just the people to develop it. Plus, it tied into their ongoing and unsettled survival debate. Well, these guys didn’t just sit around dreaming, they got busy!
Paintball has come a long way since a couple guys shot at each other in the woods of New England. Representing the paintball industry, Debra Dion Krischke of TeamEffort Events , promoters of the International Amateur Open in Pittsburgh, presents its annual Lifetime Achievement Awards for 2003: (L-R) Debra Dion Krischke; former winner Laurent Hamet of France, a paintball promoter who was instrumental in developing inflatable bags for airball tournaments; Mike Ratko of ProCaps , who has dedicated years to develop ASTM standards to keep paintball safe and injuries down and who has developed the new X-Ball pro format; former winner Bud Orr, the popular president of Worr Games Products; and Dan Colby of Air America , who has pioneered player-friendly products since 1985.
TURNING FUN TO PROFIT
In spite of growing governmental imposition at every level, one thing the homo sapiens species in the U.S. is blessed with is some old fashioned cando entrepreneurial spirit. When Hayes Noel got “shot in the ass” that summer of 1981, apparently the first thing he thought of - other than “Ouch!” - was becoming the world’s first paintball guru and starting a business. At that time, the whole paintball economy, worldwide, was squat. Zero. Zip. Nada. Today, it is in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. That’s a one followed by nine zeros! It’s truly, truly phenomenal, and it is based on one wellplaced ball in the butt.
Not only that, but as many as ten million people play paintball games every year. And that’s either a huge flash-in-the-pan sport or it’s a phenomenon.
The inventors – Hayes and Charles and Bob – had so much fun shooting each other that they figured a whole lot more people would like doing it, too. So, some of these guys visited Nelson Paint in Michigan, and within a year or two, they were selling ten times as many markers for paintball games as Nelson ever sold for agriculture and timber uses. (The Nelson Nelspot Marker was actually built by Daisy , of BB-gun fame.) The paintballs – of course, in those days they were real oil-based paint – were manufactured in a two-step process. Charles Nelson manufactured the paint and then shipped it to R.P. Scherer in Florida for ball encapsulation.
“Paintball is still in its infancy,” says Ben Torricelli , owner of Millennium Paintball Productions and a specialist in producing 24-hour paintball scenario games . “It is going to continue to grow because it has everything. Action. High-tech tools. It’s exciting and skillbased.”
The founders got with the program right away and named their first marker the “Splatmaster.” They figured they could sell the markers and paintballs in addition to licensing their game to playing fields around the U.S. They soon brought on Debra Dion Krischke , who now promotes the annual International Amateur Open north of Pittsburgh each year with DraxXus paintballs, as their public relations spokesperson.
Charles Gaines acknowledged the origins of paintball in his 1997 novel Survival Games (Atlantic Monthly Press) even though the names are changed and the ultimate action in the book is way, way out there.
For several years, the game Hayes and his business associates invented, the “National Survival Game,” which was loosely based on their original “Capture the Flag” concept, grew slowly. They had trouble convincing the mainstream press, still reeling from the hang-over from the war in Viet Nam, that their survival game was fun, that no one got hurt and that it taught practical skills. But soon, of course, like any good idea, the original disciples found they had started something they couldn’t control, something that quickly outgrew them. Survival became paintball.
Mike Ratko (left) from ProCaps in Canada has been a prime mover in the development of community standards for paintball. The ultimate result is safer play and a more widely accepted game by the general public. Dean Del Prete (right) is the President of Cousins Paintball stores and fields in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Cousins is one of the oldest and finest paintball operations in the world.
Today, the original paintball entrepreneurs have pretty much gone on with their lives and only a couple of them are directly involved in the game or the business. The game grew in popularity and evolved, but their “National Survival Game ,” popular for half a dozen years or so in the early-to-middle 1980s, was essentially static, perhaps because their founding philosophical question - “Could I survive?” - dictated a very personal, individual approach to the sport. And times changed from the stress of an international nuclear standoff to a decade of prosperity in the U.S.
A game of survival is a thrilling concept, but in the U.S. it has a tendency to be viewed essentially as a solitary, individual game. The “I” is paramount. With some exceptions such as tennis or golf, most other sports played with a ball are team events: football, soccer, basketball, baseball … even polo and water polo. Founding a sport based on the ascendancy of a single individual, who physically eliminated his opponents, like in boxing, was bound to be confining. Even hunting and archery have met those invisible boundaries. Today, paintball is larger than its founders ever imagined. In the years since the first shot heard round the world, here is how the sport has evolved.
“Survivors will always live to tell of surviving by doing just the opposite of others who have survived. Medical experts have often told survivors that by all rights they should be dead. Instead of dying they had the WILL to live. YOU, TOO, MUST ENLIST THIS WILL, that sense of self-preservation, which starts with a deep breath and the determination not to give way at any cost.” - Anthony Greenbank , pg. xi, The Book of Survival (Revised) Hatherleigh Press (WW Norton & Co.) 5-22 46th Ave. Suite 200, Long Island City, NY 11101
Style of Play: The early game was based on principles of individual initiative and individual decision-making: every man for himself. Today’s game is all about team play, communication, coordination, mutual support and certainly, just like the very first firefight, straight shootin’.
“Never surrender … unless you are completely surrounded.” Actor, author, crooner and paintball activist William Shatner of Star Trek.
Where to Play: The first recognized game in June 1981 was held in the woods on what would today be considered a “rogue field.” Just 25 years ago, there were no fields and virtually no rules except the injunction to “be a good sport.” Then, in April 1982, Caleb Strong opened the first outdoor playing field in Rochester, New York. Now, licensed outdoor paintball fields with strong insurance coverage and enforced rules for safety and play abound in the U.S. and can be found in dozens of foreign countries. There are even a significant number of indoor playing venues, tournaments and
