How to Stay in a Paintball Game

Video Transcript

"Hello, this is Rob Rubin and you are watching Expert Village. Something I want to talk about that I see a lot of new players do every time that I go out and go play and that is they call themselves out unnecessarily. Now what do I mean by that? Paintball is a game, this is not warfare, this is not a stimulation of warfare. For some people it might be but for the most part it's not. So, the rules are different here. For example; if the paintball hits you and it does not break, you are not out, you are still in the game. The ball has to leave a mark on you. Some fields are different than this but for the most part if a ball hits you and bounces off, you are still in. Now why would a ball do that? Check this out; this is a paintball that I happen to find laying around out here on the field, this is really, really squishy and the reason that is because it is a gelatin shell. Gelatin, when it gets warm, it gets a little squishy. This is what happens when you leave paintballs in your car and it gets hot or if you leave it in your trunk and it gets hot, it may not be this extreme but they do get squishy like this and this is why paintballs bounce off of things. So just a word of advice, if you are going to leave paintballs in your car, buy like a small cooler, put your paintballs in the cooler, you don't have to put ice in it, just keep them in the cooler so that it is out of the outside temperature. Because happy paintballs make happy paintball players. Happy ball, happy player, happy ball, happy player. So, yeah the balls bounce occasionally or they hit you at a funny angle or whatever. If the ball bounces, keep playing. It is a common courteousy to yell bounce, but you don't have to. The ball has to break and the ball has to leave a mark on you. Let me put my goggles on to make a point here. When you put your goggles on, a lot of times everything from about here up vanishes. You just can't see it, because the goggles won't let you and you know sometimes you get shot in places you just can't see with your goggles on. So if that happens and you don't want to call, you are not sure if the ball broke, call for a referee and yell, paint check. It is the referee's job to come over to you and to make sure you are either out or in and either way he will tell everybody, he is clean or the player is eliminated. I see a lot of players call themselves out because they ran out of paint, they ran out of air, they ran out of something, their gun doesn't work. You are not out of the game yet. Nobody has hit you with the ball yet and the ball hasn't broken on you yet, you are still in. I have done games without a paintball gun before and they are a heck of a lot of fun. The way to do that is to just, you run. Leave your gear behind, put it in the flag station, nobody is going to touch it and then just go for the other team's flag. Draw the other team's attention, be designated for a while, "oh look at me I can not give in yet." Yeah, I look stupid doing that, just imagine how stupid the other team is going to look when they get ten guys shooting at you and the rest of your team planking all of them. Heck keep the gun with you, you might run into a teammate who can loan you about ten paintballs, it is better than nothing. But for the love of everything, don't call yourself out if you are not out of the game, PLEASE."