Paintball is a high tech game of Tag, and Hide and Seek, and Capture the Flag. Paintball is played with as many as possible or as few as 2 people. Paintball is played everywhere from designated fields to backyards or even in the woods next door. Paintball can last from 3 minutes to 24 hours or longer. Any paintball game can be modified to create an experience that the players want. For example one can play a game of protect the VIP where one team must escort a specific player from one point to another without letting the VIP get marked. Another modification of the game is Alamo style where one team being outnumbered while the other team tries to take the fort.

Paintball is a competitive sport like any other game paintballers play to win. Depending on where you play and the field, the strategy of your game will vary from being quiet and sneaky and choosing your shots carefully, to being loud, fast, and shooting constantly. Being you shoot at other people and they shoot at you, paintball requires safety equipment to be worn at all times. Some of the gear that must be worn at all times while playing are goggles, and or special clothing.

Probably the most important part of a paintball game is the paintball itself. Just like in football or soccer the ball is the central object paintballs are the key element to playing paintball. The only real difference is that in any one paintball game at any point in time there can be as few as dozens to as many as thousands of paintballs in the air at any one time.

As the name suggests they are actually tiny containers of paint. Paintballs are really simple in construction. They actually share the same process as gel caps for your over the counter drugs or those bath-oil beads. The shell is a form of gelatin available in many colors and patterns. The fill is also available in a variety of colors. For all those technical people the fill is actually poly ethyl glycol which makes them non-toxic, water soluble, and best of all biodegradable.

A paintball only weighs a couple grams and the shell is strong enough that it won't break when picked up or dropped short distances. Paintballs can be viewed as a water balloon where you can throw it without breaking in your hands but when it hits its target it bursts and leaves a splat on its target.

The primary function of the paintball gun or marker, as most call it, is designed to propel the paintball at a target at a high rate of speed. In the modern paintball marker the paintball is propelled by ether carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or high pressure air. There are a few markers out there that use batteries or even propane to propel the paintball. The propellant is stored in a tank of some sort that is attached to the marker ether directly or by some length of tubing. The extra paintballs are stored in a separate tank called a hopper. Paintball hoppers come in various sizes and shapes and technology levels ranging from gravity feed to battery powered force feed.

Safety is extremely important on and off a paintball field. The power or velocity of a paintball marker is strictly regulated every gun that is in play should be regulated to under 300 FPS or Feet Per Second. A paintball traveling at 300 FPS or nearly 206 Miles Per Hour can cause some serious damage to the eyes if protective goggles aren't worn. If a paintball hits somewhere else its unlikely to do too much damage besides a bruise and a sting. The further the distance that the paintball is shot from the less likely it is to hurt. Whenever in the area of a loaded paintball gun make sure you have your protective mask on!

In addition to being a sport paintball is also used to help train the military and police. The paintball marker doesn't feel or handle like a real firearm but it is still good for combat training or simulations.

The sport of paintball has many national and international leagues around including the PSP events, GPL, and the professional league called the NPPL or National Professional Paintball League. Each of these have there own style of play and set of rules for playing this sport.