We Shot Devs in Paintball Just to Watch Them Dye

August 24th, the day Arrowhead decided to take a journey out into the deep forests of Marsta to embark on a little game adventure called Paintball. Go for team bonding they said, it will be fun they said, no pain no gain they said. Once we arrived, we got our gear together: face masks, camouflage, overalls, and filled our canteens with paint. Ready to go. We split into two teams, red and blue. The game managers arranged it so the red team had the more experienced players, at least that was the speculation by the blue team. From there, we gathered around to hear the rules of the game. It was more of a performance really. The game manager told us, “Whatever you do, don’t aim for the face.” And in those short words, it was all over. Game time.

(This is the “don’t aim for the face” guy at the top of the stairs. He knew what he was doing)

A large majority of people have never played before and didn’t know what to expect. So here are some of our soldiers in high spirits, laughing, stretching, having positive thoughts, and trying to prepare for what was coming next.

And off we went into this bright and sunny (perhaps much too sunny) day. Heads held high while going into battle. Our clothes were clean, masks were clear, shoes were dry. Whispers could be heard between teammates saying “What were the rules again?” and “I thought those were just suggestions!”In case you could not guess, this is where things started to get rather intense, much like an Arrowhead Game! People were going down one by one. Left and right. The red team was just dominating the blue team (according to the red team). They showed no mercy. No one did. It was a more strenuous activity than people thought, of course. This was war after all. Match after match, we started to feel the bruises forming from the paintballs bouncing off or exploding on our bodies, the sweat under our helmets started to accumulate (to the point where vision was hilariously distorted), our shoes were torn apart, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, people were absolutely aiming for the face. No mercy!!! Words cannot describe the level of sweat that was happening in the provided overalls.

Hours in, what was once a beautiful sunny day slowly turned into a rather cloudy one with some casual thunder and some casual heavy rain. It started to feel like we were in a Steven Spielberg movie, but maybe that was the adrenaline talking. Everyone was exhausted towards the end of it. The camp was getting flooded and people were calling it quits. We couldn’t tell where the rain began and the sweat ended. Here’s a small insight into some of the aftermath of some brave soldiers who fought the good fight.

It was fun while it lasted

Despite being too sore to walk all weekend, it was such a killer experience with the team and we all had an absolute blast (literally). Each time we do these team bonding activities we learn something new and walk away getting to know each other a little better. Until next time…