Paintball Emporium

Best of the Planet Awards 1998

| Paintball Information |

Welcome to The Paintball Emporium. This site is dedicated to paintball, those who love the sport of paintball, those who would like to know more about paintball, and finally my mother. If you have any suggestions feel free to email me or put a message in my guestbook (both are located towards the bottom of the page). Hopefully, The Paintball Emporium has all you need to know about paintball, including but not limited too, paintball guns, paintball links, paintball fields, the history of paintball, and more paintball stuff. I hope all this information allows you to enhance and better enjoy your paintball experience.

Paintball began with small guns which fired paintballs to mark cattle. Apparently some ranch reject thought it funny to paintball a pal, and things got out of hand. Someone then took the idea and ran, creating the sport of paintball. They felt these "markers" (or paintball guns) could be used in a safe way as some sort of militaristic game. Basically, it came out as Tag. The original game, as the tale is told, took place in the wilderness, when a small group of people went out and played a game of "every man for himself" tag. Using the markers to fire paintballs and "tag" you. From there they developed a basic set of rules and safety precautions, and the first version of paintball was born.

The old style marking pistols still exist in various forms. For example, the PGP, Splatmaster, and Spotmarker which are Nelspot based guns, hold the basic roots of the game. These markers are hand held pistols which run off small 12 gram CO2 bottles. They hold a limited number of paintballs and need to be cocked after each round is fired. Modern paintball has brought with it a new generation of game play as well as technological advances in paintball guns. The game is now played with an assortment of weapons, from the old style pistol paintball guns, to semi-automatics and full auto. The game is played either on an outdoor or indoor field. The fields are setup with obstacles or barriers to allow players to take cover and work their way towards each other. Paintball's rules have changed over the years as players are usually organized in teams and pitted against one another. This has created a more militaristic style game where two teams, or armies, find themselves battling.

Along with the rules changes the objectives have changed too. The object is no longer just to tag the others out. Now a number of variations have come into existence which have turned the game into a "capture the flag" style format. This of course varies as well, as new ideas and new games appear all the time.

The greatest advancement has been player awareness in safety. Originally, paintball was played with old wood shop type goggles. When paintball appeared as a collective force, they decided to accept these style goggles as safe for play. Soon afterwards, they overturned this approval and made higher quality goggles their safety standard. This was the greatest move possible, as the number of accidents and serious injuries reached very low levels. Paintball is safe to play as long as it is run properly.

Since paintball is constantly evolving into something new, it has begun to grow at an increased rate. Players range from ages 12, and sometimes younger, to old-time, over-the-hillers. The bulk of popularity seems to reside in the 15-25 range and paintball has also opened up to popularity for women. As an example, at the local fields, where I play, the number of female players has risen from an average of 1 every two weeks, to 3-5 every week.

Paintball's growth could be due to a number of reasons as the growth of paintball is being shown across the world and across racial, sexual, and age boundaries. A number of factors have contributed to this, they range from safety, to knowledge and understanding of paintball. The more you understand something (such as paintball) the less you fear it. That's one reason you're reading what I put together.

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