Paintball

During my visit to the Philippines, I had the opportunity to try out paintball for the first time.

It's not how big the paintball gun is, it's how you use it.

It was fantastically cheap. It only cost 400 pesos, for renting the gear and 40 pellets. That's about $10.

The battleground was the side of a hill in a pine forest, with the addition of some wooden planks and stacks of tires to provide additional cover.

In action

It was two on two, and we were sent to the top of the hill, while our opponents started below. I figured this gave us a pretty good tactical advantage. However, instead of sticking to our fortified position, I wanted to move around and try to come up with some fancy tactics. Imagining my partner would move laterally and help me pin down one of our opponents who was advancing, I tried to flank him and immediately got myself pinned down behind a tree instead. My partner (perhaps wisely) stayed safe behind a wide fortification and didn't budge.

The rule was, you were in till you ran out of pellets, regardless of how riddled with holes you were. So once the initial shuffling around was done, it basically degenerated into a stalemate, where you would poke your head out, take a couple of shots, and then duck back away, till our ammo was gone. I could have said to hell with it and taken a few hits in exchange for finding a better position, since there was no consequence to getting hit, but the visceral fear of getting shot was strong enough that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Ouch.

Not that I didn't get shot. My left eye and shoulder were hit, so I was definitely quite dead. The head shot was pretty sobering, and racked up the adrenaline several notches.

My partner was shot in the head - just above his face mask, which left a shockingly large red welt for a few days. One of our opponents was hit in the head and body. The other, I don't recall.

Weary wounded warriors

Next time, I want to do some target shooting first, to get a better feel for a paintball gun's range and aim.

Clearer sets of rules seem like they would be interesting. Not to mention they would help avoid the deadlock we hit and clarify victory or defeat. But having to leave the game early due to being eliminated is no fun either. Maybe some sort of rule where you had to return to a safe zone before you could rejoin the battle. Basically, respawning.

Adding more rules and adjudication would probably break up the adrenaline and tension, though.

The fascinating thing about video games is that all of that can be handled automatically, permitting smooth play despite extremely complex rule systems.

I looked to see if there were paintball video games available. (A video game simulation of a game which is a simulation of war?) The only one I found was way too realistic to be fun.

Something bright, colorful, and arcade-y, with paint splashing wildly everywhere, seems a lot more appealing to me than trying to compete directly with drab and hyper-realistic shooters, which have explosions. The lack of viscera and death should make it accessible to all ages.

Maybe an augmented reality game? M did mention technology to map the camera view to a 3-d space.