The nine new players each paid $175 to join, which covered the cost of equipment, food, and drink. The group grew from the original three to 12 for the inaugural game. Shelby Gaines took one for the team and decreed that “It didn’t hurt much!” From there, they were ready to get a group of people together and try their new survival game! Prior to the actual game they had to purchase a Nel-Spot 007 and test it to make sure it was safe to fire at humans. Their friend Bob Gurnsey created the rules for the first paintball game.Īlthough talk of this new survival game began in the late 1970s the first game didn’t take place until 1981 (Henniker, New Hampshire USA). How far will survival instincts take you? How does that stack up against the learned behavior and experience of an outdoorsman? Having heard about the Nel-Spot 007 paintball marker, they decided to make a game of it. Later in the 1970s some friends over drinks, Hayes Noel and Charles Gains, started discussing the survivability of city-dwellers in the woods. This is why today paintball guns are still called paintball markers! Originally, paintballs were used for marking things like livestock or trees from a distance, or from a vehicle. They contracted out custom CO2 pistols for firing the paintballs.

Nelson Paint Company crafted balls of paint in gelatin shells - the first paintballs. The history of paintball begins back in the 1960s. The paintball we know and love today is a relatively recent extreme sport.

Paint ball