PSP Chicago: Thoughts & Observations

Wednesday: Gots to get you one of them Pro Paintball T-shirts. Enter a contest. Beg if you have to. They are hot and very cool. I’m just saying and it isn’t because I’ve got mine. Thanks, Guys. It was hotter than Hades’ greenhouse today. The cooler temperatures promised for later in the week will bring us closer to Death Valley-like days. (Okay, maybe not quite that bad but ballpark.) When the crew arrived last Tuesday the venue had a small lake where the Pro field used to be. So that was at least partly responsible for the venue this year. It’s 2 rows of three fields with access to the fields from the middle of the Pro row. The Pro field is the center field and everyone who parks across the street passes the vendors to get to the fields access point or to the Pro field bleachers. Beyond that are few more vendors and registration and refreshments. No final word on the Doritos logo dealio yet. So far most of the games I saw today were marked by the lack of discipline on display. Which was matched, fortunately, by a decent level of aggression. The result was often entertaining if not first rate paintball.

Thursday: the promised relief from the sweltering heat failed to appear today. Maybe tomorrow. As a consequence--at least on the Pro field--Commissioner Mineo is giving the refs extra breaks which has extended the schedule a bit. If the weather remains this brutal I would expect him to continue spelling the refs with extra rest even on webcast Saturday. The Pro teams began play today and the scores were more consistently lop-sided than I’ve ever seen before. At a guess I suspect it’s a result largely of limited practice for some of the teams mixed with the peculiarities of this design--and a continuation (for some) of yesterday’s lack of discipline. [I’ll talk about that more next week when VFTD recaps the event.]
There’s more on the webcast front, too. You may remember VFTD suggested one way of getting more of the D-wire action might be to put cameras in protected brackets on the penalty boxes to give mid-field and D-wire shots. (I was mostly just throwing it out there while trying to abide by the 180 degree rule. [It’s a film maker’s thing.]) Turns out the webcast will have those shots and more. (And bigger and better besides.) Patrick "Monkey With a Gun" Spohrer--and webcast mastermind--was kind enough to credit VFTD with the idea but the truth is the crane mounted remote control cameras at each end of the field are way beyond our idea and should provide tremendous shots of the game play. (And be the kind of shots that will let viewers see the points unfold and allow you to follow the hows and whys along with the action.) The only question I have now is can I Tivo the webcast so I get to watch, too?