Paintball Digest: How does a scenario game differ from tournament play?
Guards provide security for a shipment of gold in Nocer Productions ’ “Great Train Robbery” at First Strike Paintball in Newberry, Florida.
Wayne: Tournaments are very fast and involve small teams that are sponsored by manufacturers. Team members are usually fast and athletic, so play can be much more aggressive. And with lots of money, often thousands of dollars, riding on the outcome of some 5-man shoot-out that barely lasts 5 minutes, tempers can get out of hand. The refs have to be on top of the play all the time. You almost never see somebody losing their temper on a scenario field. In scenario play, the emphasis is on sportsmanship and enjoying the game.
I mentioned that tournament teams are sponsored. That means manufacturers provide equipment, clothing or travel expenses to a high-profile team like Michael “Blue” Hanse’s Blue’s Crew or the Jacksonville Warriors from Jacksonville, Florida. The team gets its gear free, gets its picture in magazines, travels to tournaments or big, high profile games and sometimes even part of their expenses (meals or motels) will be reimbursed. A manufacturer gets visibility because the guys on the team wear the manufacturer’s name on their clothes and let the manufacturer use their pictures and maybe do some PR stuff.
Paintball Digest: So where do you go from here?
Wayne: Jackie and I travel all over the country now putting on scenario games and there are a lot of other good groups doing it, too. We’re headed up to Wasaga Beach Paintball in Canada to help put on “Stars War” (didn’t want to get in trouble with anyone in Tinsel Town) soon. Paul has a great operation. He gets 60,000 players a year at Skirmish and he’s into white-water rafting, too. We did the only, or at least the first, 48-hour scenario game in the world at Skirmish. It was based on the movie “Blade Runner” and practically everybody had a great time. I had no idea that movie was such a hit.
Wayne Dollack (left) with his field and business manager Eddie Williamson at Wayne’s World of Paintball in Ocala, Florida. Wayne says he never thought much about being called the “father of paintball scenario games.” He just thought he was having fun and making a living.
Lying in wait!
People don’t realize it, but planning a game and building props and scripting character cards and missions for 500 people takes from 4 to 6 weeks. Then you’ve got to haul everything to the field and hope for good weather. If the weather is great, you could have twice the turnout you expect and that leaves you scrambling for more Porta-Potties and referees . If it turns rotten, maybe nobody will show up and you can lose thousands of dollars.
But everything in paintball is changing fast. The equipment, especially. Paintball is on television now and then and lots of people out on the west coast are trying “air soft.” It’s like paintball, but you shoot little plastic pellets instead of breakable balls so, obviously, it is more of an honor-based game. You can’t tell when someone else gets hit. But the air soft guns (they’re not markers , because they don’t actually mark anything) shoot faster and farther. Air soft hasn’t caught on here in the east or the south, yet.
I’d say that even in regular paintball, though, the markers are much faster than they used to be. They shoot further and straighter, too.
Paintball Digest: How do you like being thought of as the “father” of scenario games?
Wayne: It’s a compliment, really, but I never looked at it that way. I’ve always just had fun and my business is helping other people have fun and play this game the right way, with sportsmanship.
Paintball Digest: What are your favorite foods?
Wayne: I like a good cheesecake and there’s a restaurant not far from here that serves a wonderful marinated octopus salad. [The noise in the background is Wayne’s World field and business manager Eddie Williamson turning green.]
You can learn more about Wayne and Jackie Dollack’s playing field and scenario games at www.waynes-world.com.
Packing paint and carrying a prize! If you don’t carry extra paint with you, you may run out in an intense fire-fight and that can mean time off the scenario field.
CHAPTER 6
TOURNAMENT
PAINTBALL
When playing with paintballs was first envisioned, professional players and well-organized international tournaments were the last possible thing in the minds of the founders. The founders were thinking survival. Could they survive if the government collapsed and they were on their own in a lawless land? Could they survive if the U.S. and the Soviet Union launched civilization-destroying nuclear strikes at one another? Could they survive if they were lost in the wilderness? Paintball was simply a way of testing themselves. It was a very personal, very individual thing.
But shooting balls of paint proved to be so much fun that the playing philosophy and venue evolved rapidly. Individual survival became team survival. Camo jammies in the woods became radical team colors and high-tech clothing on a playing field surrounded by high nets, bleachers for spectators, huge inflatable bunker-balloons and even television cameras. Paintball has become a much more varied game or sport than its founders imagined. Today, there is room for everyone (except people who will not play by the rules!) and every style of play. This chapter is all about how the pros do it … and yes, there are professional players in paintball.
Much of the coverage of paintball in national and international magazines such as Paintball 2Xtremes , Paintball, Paintball Games International and FaceFull is devoted to following the professional circuits, the NPPL, PSP and collegiate venues. Less than five out of a hundred people want to play at this highest level of competition … or maybe a lot higher percentage than that want to but won’t because it’s out of their reach. It’s sort of like wanting to win the lottery. Logically, we know that somebody is going to win, but let’s be honest, it won’t be us.
To the victor belong the spoils. JT USA’s Team Dynasty takes the 2003 World Cup in Toulouse, France.
What does it take to play professionally? Well here is what is unnecessary and may actually not be helpful. Spouse. Kids. Wealth. A lot of time spent in school beyond high school. It doesn’t take a steady job, either.
Great pro players come from all walks of life. You read their names in every magazine: Chris Lasoya , Rich Telford, Bob Long . Former greats include the likes of Oh Pawlak, Eric Felix and Shane Pestana. Oliver Lang , who plays professionally for Team Dynasty, says he loved skateboarding growing up as a California kid, but now he takes on the responsibility for getting his teammates pumped up before a game. He screams at them. He chants. He roughs them up … and they respond. They win. Not because they are in better shape or they want to win more or they have better equipment, but because, in the final analysis, Oliver says, it may be “all mental.”