This is another of those lame articles I wrote for Paintball News in '93.  Mercifully, they were never published.  I feel now that my thinking was a bit 'off' when I wrote this one.

     If you have much experience with paintball tournaments then you know that there is more than one type of game that gets played at the field.  I'm not talking about the six million variations of capture the flag.  I'm talking about 'the game' that some players and teams play with the staff and referee's of the event.  I'm not going to single out teams or players and label them, that's not my purpose here.  Besides that, the players who may be 'devils' at one tournament might be 'angels' at the next.  What I want to do is to help all of us achieve a better understanding of just what is going on when players cheat.  Only when we fully understand the dynamics of the situation will we be able to arrive at a workable solution.

     The 'game' I'm writing about doesn't have a name because no one ever talks about it.  It could be called something like 'Let's beat the refs.'  The idea is to see just how much and what the players and their team-mates can slip past the referees.  This includes all of the big nasties like wiping hits, playing on after a hit, and dialing up guns.  Before everybody goes ballistic and starts pointing fingers let's talk a little bit about why some 'players' as we shall refer to them, play 'the game'.

     Anyone who answered that question with a resounding  'because they want to win!' should set their butt back down and read on because they need to know this.  The 'thrill of victory' is not the real, underlying reason why players want to win at paintball.  It's all about ego.  Winning at a paintball tournament is about the most massive ego-boost I can imagine.  "Yes!" we say to ourselves after a win, "I (The ego is always I, never mind the rest of the team) 'I' just kicked everybody's butt!"  We get to strut around like we invented the sport.  They give us trophy's, prizes, and of course, money.  And even if they hate us, they have to smooch our hiney pack's during the awards ceremony.  I haven't seen a tournament yet where the prize was enough to offset the expense that the winning team incurred getting it.
 
     While winning at a tournament is a massive ego-boost losing is a major downer.  And that is where the other 'game' comes in.  Teams who find themselves facing a loss begin to make efforts to protect their ego's.  The most accessible and straightforward way to do this is to find someone they can beat.   Well, we don't get to pick who we play, so the only candidate left is the poor, over-worked, referees.  The elements of 'the game' are in place.  Here we have a group of guys (The refs) who have the unenviable task of making sure we don't cheat.  What a power-trip it would be just to sneak a few things past them, what a coup!  The head-rush of 'out-foxing' all of those guys, all by ourselves is a whole new level of play.  Geez, it's like the old sneak-in-the-woods game, only harder!  Additionally, the guilt of the act is readily absolved by blaming the referees for not doing their job.  'The game' has another possible payoff, it might help us win.  That would be a double victory, slipping something past the refs, and winning the tournament, Boffo Muffy! I'm in!.  Now maybe we can understand why some players even BRAG about cheating.

     The sad thing about 'the game' aside from the fact of it's existence, is that it is like a drug addiction.  If the 'players' play 'the game' too much it gets under their skin.   It's a monkey on the cheater's back when they play that won't let them rest.  Why go 'out' and suffer that ego-blow, when they could just dive into the dirt and come back up shooting?  In time it becomes reflex.  They do it even if losing one particular game would not have changed their team's standing.  They just gotta have that fix.  Their buddies do it too.  They know what's-his-name did it, he (or she) probably told them at some point when they were all alone.  They figured out that he (or she) got an ego boost from it so they decided to give 'the game' a try.  Or maybe they just arrived at it the same way their buddy did.  Then, the 'players' get caught.

     Odds were it was going to happen someday.  After all, if the risk wasn't there 'the game' wouldn't be any fun.  In a panic 'players' play all of their cards, gotta save that ego.  Or maybe the 'players' are so far gone that they didn't even realize that what they did was cheating so the accusation really stings.   Anyway, they argue like heck and their buddies jump in with them right or wrong.  They are a team are they not?  And teams stick together.  That is their nature.  Pretty soon everybody is yelling, the 'players', their team, the refs, and the other team.   Gotta face it, paintball is an adrenaline sport and adrenaline, makes us get a little crazy.  Pump in a heapin' helpin' of testosterone and we've got anarchy.  Well everything goes hay-wire during the argument, the 'players' may or may not receive a penalty, doesn't matter because the argument was not about the game.  Their ego's survive even if the 'players' have to decide that the refs had it in for them from the start or the other team paid the refs off or something equally stupid.  In the heat of things the 'players' and the rest of their team denounce the situation as 'b. s.' and vow 'never to come back'.  This is a last, usually vain, attempt at getting a decision reversed.  Those words form the final barrier that protects that fragile ego.  They leave, secure in the knowledge that they showed the rest of the people at the field.  Or something like that.

     What can we do?  I don't know.  Maybe somebody should start a Betty Ford Clinic for Paintball Ego Addicts.  Charge a case of paint a day for a room.  Telling everybody to 'drop the ego' is pretty unrealistic.  So is removing referees from the field.  If we did that, those 'players' would just focus their minds on hiding their actions from the other team.  That's why we started using referees in the first place.  So that's no good.   The only thing that comes to my feeble mind is this.  Maybe we should be a little more considerate of those guys that didn't take first place.  Maybe those guys that did better should go around, shake a few hands and say 'Hey, you guys were good, we just got a few lucky breaks.'  It might help ease the bruised ego's of the less fortunate teams.  Only one problem with that, we gotta swallow our egos to do it, and some of us would choke tryin'.

                                        -scarecrow-

     P. S.  Could I swallow my ego?  Gulp, choke, choke, maybe.