Kaos Theory

(Btw, I started writing this on Friday so I am claiming this post was delivered "on time." Baca time, that is. See the time stamp.)

There's really nothing new here. I just like to give stuff names and I like kaos theory because there already is a chaos theory--duh--(that says, in part, that certain kinds of dynamic systems are determined by their initial conditions and are entirely predictable--at least in theory--but otherwise appear entirely, well, chaotic)--and that is very much what offensive paintball looks like too. (But it's not.)
Kaos theory relies on sensory overload to be successful. Everything you are taught about playing competitive paintball is turned on its head in the dynamic offensive game. You are supposed to play tight and limit risk. Control lanes and wait for opportunities that are frequently the result of eliminations. Moreover, making big and/or aggressive moves too early is often a recipe for getting blown up and putting your team in a hole. And even if the big move works it can leave a single player overextended and pinned down. So what gives?
Where most teams and/or players go wrong when they want to be an aggressive offensive powerhouse is ultimately they fail to commit. They chicken out. Like a wide receiver in football going over the middle they alligator arm the attempted pass--they get halfway through doing it right but suddenly seem to realize how wrong it could all go and try to pull back--and that's when it all goes wrong. Every time. Guaranteed. The first rule of offensive paintball is follow through because once you (and your teammates) make the move it's all or nothing.
My first team captain believed in offensive paintball--and so did we (it sure seemed exciting anyway)--but we sucked at it. As a team we had a few team rules. One rule was if you see a teammate making his move--you go too. In simplest form that's what offensive paintball is all about. It didn't work for us very well because we didn't know how to practice being a cohesive offense. Or even how to think about what it took to execute aggressive offense. Back in their respective heydays that's what teams like Aftershock and Image were all about. (Don't get me wrong. Even the most offensive of teams executed their offense under control but when they came at ya, they came in a wave.) Think too of early 7-man Dynasty.
A decade ago Dynasty revolutionized competitive paintball with their aggressive running & shooting style but they were just building on what had come before them. And it wasn't the running & gunning that made the difference--that revolutionized the competitive game--it was the speed. (The running & shooting helped make it possible though.)
On last thing before we nail kaos theory down. Vision. And communication. They perform complimentary functions. The issue with both is collecting, disseminating and interpreting information about what is happening on the field--now. Conventional paintball wisdom says that visual and communicated information facilitate action. That is, if you know enough about what's going on it allows you, as a player, to act.
Kaos Theory says we are gonna give you so much information so fast you can't even begin to process it fast enough to act effectively and as a result we is gonna run you down and blow you up. Think of a player making a bunker run. Even with sideline coaching it's almost impossible to stop because it happens too fast for the player being run down to receive that information and act to counter it without getting shot. Now multiply that effect by 5. Or 7. Or, back in the day, by 10. Now I know what you're gonna say: but, but , but--if a team is committed to defense and crossed up covering lanes offense is simply going to run to their death. Which may be correct in certain situations but that isn't a failure of the kaos theory concept, it's a failure to properly execute it.
Besides, I never said it was simple to do--just simple to understand. Watch a couple of Aftershock or Impact videos from NJ. When Impact attacked the show side of the X watch what happens and what the rest of the team does in response. That's offensive paintball. (In Impact's case their pressing the attack was usually conditional.) Watch a couple of Shock videos. You will see offensive paintball. Watch the end of the Shock-Damage match and you'll see Damage counter with their own brand of offensive execution in an effort to come back. It doesn't always work but when it does it's a thing of rare beauty.
If you're still uncertain or unconvinced try thinking of it like this. Imagine you have a bird's eye view of a game being played. It unfolds over 3 or 4 minutes with moves, matching or countering moves, working angles and players shooting paint. Eventually one team gets an advantage of either numbers or field position and begins to attempt to close out the game. Rewind the game back to the beginning but this time play it on fast forward. The same things happen, they just happen a lot faster. Kaos Theory says a team (or player) can neutralize a team's defenses simply by executing their offense so fast the other team is unable to process the dynamic changing field situation fast enough to stop them. Is offensive paintball an every point or game option? Probably not for most but only because effective execution at speed is almost as difficult as trying to stop it.

Playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey

If you're confused by the title, no worries, it's a cultural reference to a kid's party game. I have no idea if it's even played anywhere anymore but it was when I was a kid. (Maybe when my kids were kids, too.) The idea is you put a large picture of a tailless donkey on the wall and give each child a turn at pinning a separate tail onto the donkey. The catch was you had to do it blindfolded and then you were spun around until you were dizzy and disoriented. Hilarity ensued. That's kinda how I feel about most of the efforts to "fix" competitive paintball. Even when the discussion is thoughtful and interesting--as it has been the last few days. We're outta the loop when actual decisions get made and the decision-makers are being tugged left, right and sideways desperately hoping they don't make a (nother) mistake.

The WC numbers I mentioned the other day don't prove anything. May even have multiple likely sounding explanations but what I want to do is try and broaden the picture of competitive paintball we're all looking at. In 1997 WC had 67 10-man teams. In 1998 there were 80 10-man teams. In 1999 there were 87 10-man teams. In 2000 there were 117 10-man teams. In 2001 there were over 180 10-man teams and in 2002 there were more than 210 10-man teams. This is the period of time Cup left the woods, moved to Hyperball, then Airball. Electropneumatic guns became commonplace. Xball was introduced and the NPPL split.

In 2003/2004 the PSP offered both Xball & 10-man. In 2004 the new NPPL was averaging around 170 teams an event. 2005 was the first year Xball was the stand alone headliner at Cup with only 77 xball teams & 247 5-man teams. In 2005 the NPPL averaged around 200 teams an event and by the end of 2006 Pure Promotions was looking to bail. (Rumor had it both leagues were losing money. These were also the days of the Race 2-TV.) 2006 saw 131 xball teams & 235 5-man teams participate. 2007 was the peak for xball teams at 160 with a 10% drop in 5-man teams to 212. 2008 had 138 xball teams & 195 5-man teams. (In Pacific Paintball's worst year they had more teams competing on average per event than the latest incarnation of the USPL/NPPL.) 2009 saw xball decline to its second lowest stand alone total of 125 along with still shrinking 5-man total of 183. 2010 had 134 xball teams while 5-man fell off the table dropping to 118. There's some facts & figures. Here's some more.

Bottom drops out on years of streaking growth as industry sales go flat. Fall of 2006 the PMI/NPS merger is engineered creating KEE. Jarden buys K2 in 2007 after K2 struggles with the paintball division it began putting together with the Brass Eagle purchase in what, 2003. By 2006 unification talks between the the two major leagues isn't a whispered rumor but an annual event on the end of season calendar as an intransigent industry demands action yet refuses to back one league or the other despite claiming dire economic consequences.

Since I'm running long I'll leave the analysis of the data to y'all--for now. And I'll pick it up again first of next week.

Crazy is probably a little harsh, John.

But you could be doing decreasing concentric circles around the deep end of the pond that is Paintball. Of course I'm not a doctor and I didn't spend last night at a Holiday Inn Express so it's just an opinion and not a diagnosis. As for the rest of you lot--If you missed it I'm referring to John Amodea's editorial in the August issue of X3. (The link is the title.) He closed his editorial by asking his readers if he was crazy and I thought why bother with the traditional letter to the editor when I could as easily respond here at VFTD.
The premise is that major leagues (and much of the rest) of competitive paintball is in decline from its peak years in the middle of the last decade. So far so good. I think we can all agree that actual numbers of participants is down and the numbers are significant. Beyond stating the obvious and giving a nod to the bad economy--this is where things go off the track--the following paragraphs attempt to make the case for why using some dubious assertions and some outlandishly inaccurate variations of the conventional wisdom. For example, fields are shrinking, as are the bunkers and guns are going faster than ever. The last time a tourney field shrank it was by five feet and as a result of Dye buying the wrong sized carpets for the PSP's LA event in 2006. As for bunkers tall cakes and regular cakes are bigger and more playable than the blocks they replace and I don't recall carrots and wingnuts being particularly large or comfy props back in the day either. And none of those claims post date the high water marks for tourney ball anyway. So if they are contributing factors now why weren't they during tourney ball's peak?
Beyond the suspect claims the principle point seems to be that most players can't play at the highest levels. Another revelation. Of course they can't--and they never have. If he really means the majority can't compete at the national level in any division that's just plain silly. They can and they do. Offered in conclusion is the easy peasey solution of lengthening the field and making sure there's a big Home bunker for the old, fat (slow) guy. Why, do that and we're halfway home to the good old days.
Okay, maybe I am being (overly) harsh and it isn't (quite) that bad but it does seem to me that the whole editorial amounts to little more than nostalgia and a retrograde conception of what the game ought to be. It does, however, lead to an interesting dichotomy worth exploring and does lay a (creaky) foundation for asking some important questions because--despite any real editorial clarity it is observably true that the competitive demographic has skewed younger. And at least with Race 2 the game is more physically demanding. But it's also true that there are hundreds, if not thousands of registered competitors no longer competing at the national level for reasons other than the physical demands of the format.
From a practical perspective the real issue is how to sustain major league competitive paintball when the old model of tournament operation is on the verge of failing. Answering that question is far more important than worrying about who is playing and who isn't. Neither league made money during their peak years.
In addition, the fact is there's plenty of alternative tournament and competition paintball options available for much less than national level play costs and none of them show any signs of replacing the current standards. The potential exists more so today to play virtually any kind of paintball you want than ever before.
Beyond the practical the answers to the following will set the path for the future: Is the game's competitive future to be found in its past or is the answer to keep moving forward? Is the movement towards being a sport unsustainable? Is the transition into a sport necessarily going to remake the game as it's played competitively and narrow, at least for a time, the number of devoted players?

The Conventional Wisdom

This isn't the first draft of this post. Or the second. In fact this post isn't anything like what I thought I wanted to say. The easy part was starting. It's been a lot tougher finding my way through to any sort of conclusion but the mighty maw of the blogosphere doesn't long tolerate deliberation. (Much like my absurdly low threshold for boredom.) Truth is I've left out most of my conclusions, mostly so you can draw your own. I don't know if there's a meal here or only table scraps. You decide.
One long-standing, grey-bearded item of conventional wisdom in paintball states: Tourney ballers (and tournament paintball) are in the minority and it's not even close. No doubt you've heard that one. May even have repeated it yourself. Me too. If it's true (and it has to be, doesn't it?) then tournament paintball has been the tail that wags the dog. How did that come about? The industry has for a long time (in paintball years) marketed paintball via the tourney game and players. The media (when it existed) focused on tournament paintball. Tourney ball drove the tech developments and the notion of paintball as sport motivated many and inspired the push for mainstream acceptance and TV. I know how this looks but don't be too hasty about drawing any conclusions just yet. Is there a danger of the pendulum swinging too far the other way? What doesn't the conventional wisdom tell us that we need to know?
Here's some Old Skool conventional wisdom: Moving paintball out of the woods was a, and perhaps even the, critical step in the development of competitive paintball. (Ever notice how certain bits of conventional wisdom don't seem to fit with other bits of conventional wisdom and yet it doesn't seem to matter. I wonder why that is? /end Andy Rooney riff) Who can argue with that? But tell me how much impact moving out of the woods had, if any, on the player explosion of a few years ago. Are they related? If they are related is there any disconnect between the notion that the vast majority of players are rec/woods/scenario players? I'm just asking but with what little hard data there seems to be it looks like a case could be made that moving out of the woods also broadened paintball's appeal across the board. I realize that in some quarters that's sacrilege and I also think that some measure of paintballers preferences are regional but does the idea put a different face on the "typical" rec player? What else could have moved the majority of local fields to invest in some brand of airball or other? You know, given the conventional wisdom about the limited number of tourney ballers and all. I'm beginning to wonder about the utility of conventional wisdom in general.
How about another piece of classic conventional wisdom? The transition to xball happened because 10-man was dying out. Is that really what happened? Not according to the numbers. The last year that 10-man was the featured event ('02) was also the largest WC 10-man turn out ever and the Chicago event that year featured more 10-man teams than the WC of only two years earlier. In terms of numbers of teams xball has yet to match the 10-man numbers of WC '01. So what precipitated the sharp rise in 10-man participation? And what was the cause of the switch to xball? And if you really want to make yourself crazy figure out which years were the fat years for industry and try and relate those to event turnout. And if you can't does that make our first item of conventional wisdom seem all the more correct? Or are things becoming so complicated it's hard to know what to think?
Here's another bit of more current conventional wisdom: irresponsible punks and their high ROF guns are destroying paintball. Hard to argue with this one, right? I mean the signs are everywhere. PBIndustry is reputed to be in serious trouble. Sponsorships are definitely shrinking. The number of peeps playing paintball is on the decline, or so it's said. The NPPL is gone and if folks are to be believed some of the paint giants are struggling to survive. Nobody seems to know how tourney participation will shake out this coming season but plenty of peeps are worried. Local fields and stores are struggling too and some are closing. All true as far as it goes.
Except there's a problem. One problem with conventional wisdom is that it's not always true. Another problem is it can be an easy shortcut that appeals to Paintball's herd mentality. (You know, the one where everybody agrees instead of thinking.) In this case the problem is the disconnect between the legitimate trials facing Paintball and the purported cause. Irresponsible punks and their high ROF guns. How did the industry get into trouble? Are there more or less people playing paintball today than 10 years ago? If the answer is more, and it certainly appears to be, then were the paint companies even worse off 10 years ago? How did industry survive at all? On the local level is it numbers of players or gross sales that are the real issue? How does the current economy figure into the equations?
How many irresponsible punks with high ROF guns does it take to collapse an industry?
And if they all disappeared overnight would all of Paintball's problems go with them?