How We Got Here
Some of you probably know this already, but, I have now been the editor, publisher and / or owner of PCRI Magazine( 1991-1999), Paintball 2Xtremes( 1999-2009), PaintballX3 Magazine( 2009-2014) and Paintball Media Magazine( 2014-present). And that doesn’ t include my stints with Crossfire Magazine, Paintball News and Paintball Consumer Guide Magazine( sister publication to Action Pursuit Games). I only tell you this to say, every single article published in every issue of those magazines is still on hard drives in my office.
While researching for this issue I pulled together 507 scenario and big game articles from those 35 years of publishing. It’ s amazing what you can find in more than 500 articles, including more than 100 interviews of players, teams and game promoters. That was the beginning of the research we did for this issue— and by“ we” I mean Cheryl Ellis, Brenda Seefeldt and myself.
After gleaning what we needed from those archives, we then interviewed more than 80 current and past scenario game producers, command staff, photographers, field owners and players. Then we went to our collection of magazines like APG, Facefull, Paintball Sports, Paintball News, PGI and others to verify dates, locations and historical moments. We followed that up by going through thousands of photos, an extensive patch collection, my notes taken at the 150 or so scenario and big game I’ ve been to and video interviews I did for The Complete History of Paintball documentary film.
And then the compiling, cross-referencing and follow-up interviews began.
A month later we started writing.
With each draft of the main article, we doublechecked dates, names and other pertinent facts. And then sent those off to a few key people that have agreed to help us do factchecking. A very special thanks to Diane“ Mother” Howe, Kerry“ Viper” Rosenberry, Lawrence“ TB” Wright, Wynter Rose Dollack, Andrew Ferguson, Bill Bailey, Andy“ Dorsai” Van Der Plaats and everyone else that became part of the team in some way.
Finally, I want to give credit to the late Ken“ Hollywood” Gilder. I acquired Ken’ s entire photo collection from the 1980s and 90s about 20 years ago. He kept meticulous records of all of his images— and for those that don’ t know him,“ Hollywood” attended nearly every Wayne Dollack scenario game in Florida and hundreds around the country in the infancy of scenario paintball. What a gift to have his work.
Thank you to all that helped in this project and thanks to you who are reading this. Enjoy.
One more thing...
This issue is not intended to be the“ be-all, endall” of scenario paintball history. Our intention is for this to be a“ living document” that will be updated as we uncover new scenario game history. To that end, feel free to email me anything you feel would be a correction or a good addition to the issue.
John Amodea
Editor