Airsoft Mentality

[uscmCorps]

I recently read an article positing what is conceptually right, wrong and the potential pitfalls of Airsoft's evolution and where it needs to go. It basically boils down to what the author defined as: "Airsoft Mentality"

 

Full article here:

http://airsoftscoop.com/2013/12/17/airsoft-mentality-by-arthur-lowther/

 

Aside from badly needing an editor (like, really badly), the article has an interesting take on the subject. I think the spirit and the intent of the message is on the right track. But I don't (personally) agree with all the points made as I see it as somewhat limited in vision as to what Airsoft as a toy/tool/training aid can be used for.

 

That said, the article is an interesting read and I thought it'd spark some conversation. Give it a read through and share your thoughts.

[ninja master of coffee]

My opinion on the article is, I don't think all airsoft is "Milsim" as he puts it, most airsoft is skirmishes, yes they have military elements, more so than tournament paintball in that they tend to be more mission than kill count focused but Milsim is a fairly specific thing. I agree with him for the most part on what airsoft should be, i.e. mission and team play based with a good measure of honour and fun rather than elitist kill count fests. I don't think he need worry so much about airsoft degenerating into something akin to tournament paintball, for a start it would get acrimonious way faster, can you imagine the kind of ego-centric jebends that kind of thing attracts minus actual paint marks? Seriously, no normal player would get involved, the people who did would just end up having a fist fight. I do agree with his idea about an airsoft mentality, seems pretty much on the money.

[Beeingmyself]

There are a lot of people playing both paintball and airsoft around the world today

so why not just find the place and the people along with your kind of playstyle you want?

Instead of predicting what airsoft is on a large scale.

It all comes down what kind of playstyle you prefer, - not what your personally view think the rest of us is allowed to play.

That kind of thinking is the worst of all if you want my personal view

 

Keeping the media out is one of the worst thing you can do.

It seems fishy and they will start dicking deeper and find more dirt. Try with som good coverage instead.

 

The talk about police and contracts and what not, why bother again the media might see the policerapport and think:

Yet another bad case including airsoft..... Naa dont like that one too much do we?

 

And it seems to me that you are contradicting yourself a bit here so please elaborate if I'm mistaking

but what airsoft is about and especially milsim is that not to have all the right gear and wear and realistic looking weapons and what not?

This sumes up my entire point here - airsoft is what you make of it, please don't try to shuff your personally opinion down over everybody's elses heads.

Some have fun with milsims others with speedball and yet others with playing for the fun of it please have the decency to respect others way of having fun without trying to say it is wrong. It is all good buddy it is just more and other ways to have fun along the same hobby/sport as you have fallen for as well as we have.

[Roland1014]

>Good coverage

and

>Media

 

Are almost mutually exclusive, unless you're having some sort of fundraiser for the less fortunate. (God I hate that euphemism)

 

I think the guy started tripping over his ideas, but the basic message is "Have fun". People swear that springers suck, but we've all got into laughing games with clear guns during lunch break and sometimes that's more fun than a hardcore firefight. As long as you're having fun, you're airsofting (though not always vice versa  ).

[ninja master of coffee]

I think as far as the media is concerned, mostly it doesn't even know airsoft exists, much less care one way or the other. The daily mail brigade will occasionally get all hysterical about "replicas that can be turned into REAL MACHINE GUNS WITH SOME TAPE AND SOME PAPER CLIPS!!" or something to that effect, mostly they get ignored because mostly people know they talk *badger*s all the time. As for predictions about where airsoft is heading, does it matter? Either the predictions will be accurate or inaccurate and I highly doubt the predictions themselves will have much impact on that. I don't see tournament airsoft ever taking off personally because I don't think it's a reliably score-able sport, much less so than paintball. Even paintball makes a terrible spectator sport, airsoft would be literally tens of minuets of starring at some trees and bushes with brief, visually confusing engagements. Wow, such entertainment, very confuse.

[Panzergraf]

I don't think all airsoft is "Milsim" as he puts it, most airsoft is skirmishes

 

A skirmish can be milsim.

I agree with the article that airsoft is not a sport, but I'd rather call it a hobby than a mentality.

Milsim is a mentality, and that's something I've been saying for years. Like, you can have the most awesome site, scenario and require all the attendees to wear 100% RS gear, but if they don't have the milsim mentality, the game will just end up being glorified speedball.

If everyone at the game do possess this milsim mentality, you don't really need a lot of fluff (though fluff is always nice) to get a great milsim experience, even it it's just an afternoon skirmish.

[TheFull9]

Far as I can tell he's just basically just afraid that airsoft's going to turn entirely in to a purely competitive sport, as opposed to what is currently (IMO) just a general word that umbrellas a fairly wide range of hobbies that all sort of cross over.  I'm just not seeing it though, the only conclusion I can draw is that's perhaps what he's seeing a lot in his locality so, as humans are prone to naturally doing, he's assuming that's what's happening all over.

 

I've been at this maybe 7.5/8 years now which is obviously a lot less than quite a few people out there, but from my first ever skirmish to the ones I've played quite recently, I can't say I've detected any sign of a tournament mentality creeping in.  The guns have changed a bit with new systems and emerging trends, sites occasionally close and new ones open, there's a bit less DPM and a bit more Multicam, but all fairly minor stuff really.   As many other people reading this probably do, I follow airsoft YouTube channels from countries all over and read various international forums and news sites; I just can't say I share the same concern as the article.

 

I think the prevalence of the word milsim throughout the article is also mis-leading, I don't think he's really talking about that 'hardcore' side of skirmishing which is more akin to going on a military exercise.  As one of the early paragraphs highlights, he's just saying that airsoft is in his opinion generally a Military emulation hobby rather than LE simulation or any other service/organisation that employs guns, purely based on the types of replicas most people use.

[jal3]

This guy, Arthur Lowther, doesn't know what he talks about. It's obvious that he's a diehard milsimmer who doesn't get competition.

He wants people to stop being competitive and just have fun.

Well, you can't. Once you become good, it's hard to have fun from silly games and mediocre opponents. It is like playing quake with dice instead of mice. You want a consistent challenge, not a dicethrow. You want something that warrants an effort. Something that rewards skill. Otherwise it's just boring. Airsoft is fun when you're new and everything is "mystical".

Hence why so many people switch from airsoft/recball to tournament paintball (or try forcing it into airsoft); because they want a challenge based on skill against likeminded people.

 

Here's the thing, paintball didn't turn into tournament paintball. It split into tournament paintball and recreational paintball. Recball is still pretty big.

The same thing is happening in airsoft (at least in the west). It's becoming big enough that the milsimmers can play in peace from the speedballers. And vice versa.

 

So no, nothing bad is happening. It's just the occasional clashes of cultures becoming more appearent, because the different cultures themselves are more defined now.

Think 12-15 years back. Everything was just "skirmish", no matter what type of people played it.

 

Speedball is not new either (even ignoring that it just wasn't properly named/defined before). If you look at Hawaii (IIRC), the Phillipines, Denmark and some other places, it has always been there.

[jkpics]

I don't need a "gatekeeper" to explain how I am allowed to have fun playing airsoft.

 

There are room for everybody, even the crazy swedes  and their zombie games (it's a thing)

[renegadecow]

Speedball is not new either (even ignoring that it just wasn't properly named/defined before). If you look at Hawaii (IIRC), the Phillipines, Denmark and some other places, it has always been there.

 

Sorry, gag reflex.

[Agent Hunk]

He makes some valid points, at least relevant to where I live.

 

I hate the word mil-sim because it has ten definitions for ten different people but for the purpose of this post I will use it to broadly define scenario based game play and speedball to define elimination/kill based game play.

 

Ideally these two parties would exist in a separate world and never interact unless someone enjoyed both styles. However I see them clash far too often. Speedball guys shows up to milsim events and complain about the lack of action or whatever. Then the milsim guys complain they have to work with guys totally not contributing to the scenario. Now they could of just read the rules and not come but reading rules seems to be a forgone concept for even milsim players. And all you need to gander attendance is a high head count and cool AO. This is a worsened issue with the amount of speedball players fresh from paintball because the ammo and guns were cheaper.

 

Every year I go to a Fallout game where the focus is more on roleplaying and thinking as opposed to just shooting through everything. It's been like this for FOUR years. And every year the same people show up and complain about how awful not having enough ammo or kills is. There is absolutely no shortage of speedball events in the area and yet they come to an event they clearly won't enjoy and complain. Unfortunately the voice of discontent is often heard the loudest and some producers retool their events because a small group was overly vocal.

 

 

I like competition. However I much prefer it in the sense of game objectives. Not out killing or out ROFing someone else. My favorite games have been where I've completed objectives without firing a shot.
 

IMO if people could just learn to better select their events it would be better for everyone. Producers could stop running some middle the road thing that both sides hate and everyone could enjoy airsoft how they prefer it. In their own little world without acknowledging the other.

[renegadecow]

My favorite games have been where I've completed objectives without firing a shot.

This.

My most memorable game was when we played a scenario where I acted as a battered housewife. I call for the cops (domestic dispute) only to find the ones responding at the door were actually robbers disguised as cops fleeing to our house being pursued by real cops. One of them (there were two) takes me hostage as a human shield, one arm around my neck the other holding an M9. My "husband" is on the verge of being gunned down by the other assailant. I grab the extended gun of the guy holding me and guide it towards the other assailant and put my finger over his trigger finger and make the shot. The other guy goes down while my husband grabs the fallen guys gun and takes down the guy holding me hostage while effectively disable his gun by putting my finger behind the trigger. All of this happening under a minute from the doorbell.

[Interficium]

This sounds to me like the opinion of someone who only reads airsoftforum.com and only plays with adolescents. The "tournament" and "How many RPS/FPS is this" stuff is pretty minimal once you get into the type of audience that's on armies, for instance.

 

There's really not a huge push to turn airsoft into a sport. On an industry level most of those guys are well aware of the big contraction paintball has been going through for the better part of a decade after the big effort to turn paintball into a nationally-televised sport collapsed; they're not going to push airsoft in that direction and risk the same.

 

For all this fear that Airsoft is going to morph into sport from hobby, to be honest, most if not all the personal problems I've had with airsoft players have NOT been with speedballers or "play to win" kids, but the real hardcore milsim and airsoft "team" guys.

 

Despite the fact that I've sunk many thousands of dollars into gear and playtime on Airsoft, and am definitely in the "milsim" camp if anything, I do admit groaning to myself internally when I see guys who have fully-geared-out airsoft pics as their Facebook profile pictures show up to the field... I guess I'm just picky in that I want people to be serious... but not too serious?

[jal3]

Sorry, gag reflex.

You know we use the speedball videos from your country as weapons against milsimmers?

[renegadecow]

Yes. I'm just thankful those guys mostly play on the an entirely different island as I do.

[3vi1-D4n]

I understand what he is getting at in the article.  

 

Coming from a military background, like the author, I come to recognise good teams, appreciate good teamwork and individual skills, the effort involved in rehearsing, and the planning involved in a well thought out scenario.  

 

 When you and your team mates work hard and the game flows, and you see that your effort results in good outcomes in a game, it gives you a real buzz.  Like training a basketball/soccer team and seeing it all the hard work coming to fruition at a tournament.  That is really fun and a challenge.

 

Because airsoft has so many of the elements which are identical to the military, we expect that the military procedures is the most efficient way to play the game.  And seeing the number of speedballers and speedsofters, or speedsoft disguised as milsim (milsoft), we are horrified at the low skill level of the players, and some of the dumb stuff that happens.  

 

I don't think anyone is trying to be elitist, just that some of us have just been exposed to better ways of doing something and unfortunately want to lead others in the same direction.  We like to be physically and mentally challenged, and appreciate good people, building good teams and fighting a good fight.

 

Unfortunately:

 

- Most airsofters don't play to survive, they play to get a personal high to rack up kills and waste people.  

- Most commercial fields want to have large numbers of players, ignoring skill mix, so games are designed to have quick churn and to appeal to the masses (i.e. low skill, individualistic, quick turnaround game play which is meaningless)

- Most airsoft guns have the fire power of an M60 with the weight of an MP5, and when that is so, one does not appreciate how much firepower is at your finger tips, and whether there are an real advantages/shortcomings of each weapon, negating the need to work together and form strategies.

- Because of the factors above, most airsofters don't appreciate the need to work in tight knit teams, or to create specialisations within teams, which is a critical part of team development and game development.

 

To most airsoft veterans, it takes an average airsofter 8 years in the speedsoft/milsoft arena to realise that, yes, the military procedures are the most efficient way to play the game and to improve the game.  However by that time it is too late because they are so conditioned to the instant gratification games we often see at fields, that its hard to switch over.

  

So for us who have been in large company/platoon sized deliberate attacks or functioning in small teams detachments, looking at the way airsofters play is like watching monkeys wage war by flinging p00p, in poorly coordinated p00p flinging skirmishes.  Sometimes its fun, and it can be, but most of the time we wonder why we spend our efforts putting up with this monkey businesses.  

 

The most dangerous are the military personnel who wants to blat rounds because they don't get enough trigger time at work. They really give the wrong ideas to others.  

 

My military friends who play do try to work together, and games really become more alive because we come up with things we have adapted from the military and used it in games; Anti-vehicle ambushes, hit and run, probing, infiltration, blitzrieg style attacks.  Games flow smoother and you have the feeling of confidence I seldom get with airsofters.

 

Some of you may protest:  "Why do I need a gatekeeper to my fun?  I don't like people telling me what to do!"   Well, by running off lone rangering to get some glory, you are technically ruining other people's fun by abandoning them.  It sends a message that other people are not important, creates distrust and disunity, and this doesn't allow future games to grow.  Its like any team sport out there, you need to play as a team to have fun, and in order to have a team you need to appreciate the value of your team mates and their contributions as a part of the strategy of the team...

 

Hence why I understand the article:  Airsoft IS a mindset, not just a thrill seeking extreme sport.

 

But the other point is; All team sports requires the same mindset.

[jkpics]

Drop the milsim part and just say that airsoft is the most fun when you play with and against people that play it the same way that you do.

 

All the ex-mil guys I have played with (including myself)  are not into milsim, we have had enough of hurry up and wait, we just want to do the assault/defend part 10-15 times and go home.

[3vi1-D4n]

 

All the ex-mil guys I have played with (including myself)  are not into milsim, we have had enough of hurry up and wait, we just want to do the assault/defend part 10-15 times and go home.

 

I am not a supporter of Milsim.  I am not a fan of hurry up and wait, or the screaming and shouting that comes with it.  That is the toxic part of the overall military culture. 

 

Drop the milsim part and just say that airsoft is the most fun when you play with and against people that play it the same way that you do.

 

That's basically saying nothing really, that there is no objective mindset of approaching a team sport, which I disagree.  Unless airsoft is not seen as a team sport but like singles bandminton, tennis etc.

[jkpics]

Is airsoft really a sport? or a hobby? or both at different times for different people?

[Cannonfodder80]

I started reading the above article but gave up as it just looks to me as if the author is getting his panties knotted up because some people want to play differently to him. If you want milsim then go to a milsim event but if you want a normal Sunday skirmish then go to that.

[Pkekyo-Nor]

 

Ideally these two parties would exist in a separate world and never interact unless someone enjoyed both styles. However I see them clash far too often. Speedball guys shows up to milsim events and complain about the lack of action or whatever. Then the milsim guys complain they have to work with guys totally not contributing to the scenario. Now they could of just read the rules and not come but reading rules seems to be a forgone concept for even milsim players. And all you need to gander attendance is a high head count and cool AO. This is a worsened issue with the amount of speedball players fresh from paintball because the ammo and guns were cheaper.

 

Every year I go to a Fallout game where the focus is more on roleplaying and thinking as opposed to just shooting through everything. It's been like this for FOUR years. And every year the same people show up and complain about how awful not having enough ammo or kills is. There is absolutely no shortage of speedball events in the area and yet they come to an event they clearly won't enjoy and complain. Unfortunately the voice of discontent is often heard the loudest and some producers retool their events because a small group was overly vocal.

 

^THIS. SO THIS. SO *fruitcage* THIS.

[jal3]

Interesting to see how it's different from country to country. Here it's the other way around; people go from airsoft (of any type) to tournament paintball. You would never ever see a "speedballer" at a milsim here. People don't bother showing up at events that don't cater to them.

Could you elaborate more on what it's like in Norway? How players progress through airsoft types.

[Azubi]

I once attended a 'milsim' game run by a load of Filipinos in Sharjah, and it was box mags and holding the gun over your head to fire over the barriers galore. It as basically just their normal speedball games but they had to get to a 'pilot'.

[renegadecow]

Sadly, lots of folks here just like to say they're playing milsim rules (without even knowing what it means) because they think it makes them cooler. It's as washed out as saying tactical or tier one.

[scorch]

That article, and this resulting thread, leave me thinking that some folk need to pull their head out of their *albartroth* and understand that airsoft is not the same for everyone and no one play style is "better" than another.