Why do paintball players need nicknames? If you go into corporate America you will meet lots of Johns, Rachels and a few Mr. Smiths or President Coopers, but you don't meet very many Mad Dogs or Big Reds. Paintballers, though, love to give themselves names that the rest of the world doesn't know about.

I'm just as guilty as anyone else - I've used the nickname "Miser" ever since I first chose a nickname to play a multiplayer computer game.  Incidentally, I chose the name from another computer game character - the ghost miser from King's Quest IV, if you remember that game.  There's nothing special about my nickname, I just liked the name as a kid and it has followed me onto the paintball field (unless I can just go as "Dave").

I realize that nicknaming might be more prevalent in the woods than on the speedball field (though speedballers do come up with creative nicknames) and it's possible that the military-esque nature of woodsball suits the military tradition of nicknames for enlisted soldiers.  I, though, have another theory:

Paintball started gaining popularity in the mid-to-late '80s.  At the same time in America, 1986 to be exact, Top Gun came out and everybody wanted to be known as Maverick or Goose or some other similar-type name.  With paintball, though, the naming game just stuck.  Then again, maybe not.

If you have a creative paintball nickname, share it in the comments and tell us the story behind it.

One thing I've come to realize is that a competition with the "best" guns doesn't mean the game is any more fun to play. The games I enjoy the best are when everybody is shooting a comparable gun. That way, when somebody does better, it's because that person won on their merits. I don't care if it's Egos and Angels, Tippmanns and Piranhas or plastic pumps, it's better when everybody is shooting comparable guns.

But, when I play a game with semi-automatics, I find that I run more, spend less time behind bunkers and generally enjoy the game more. I like the basic blowbacks because they remind me of playing the game how I learned to play it.

With the 2010 winter Olympics coming to a close, I'm reminded of  a question I posed two years ago during the 2008 Olympics: does paintball deserve a spot in the Olympics? My original thoughts on the matter haven't changed, but I'm interested in what any of you readers might think about paintball becoming an Olympic sport.  Share your thoughts in the comments.

Finally, some good news in paintball.  Tom Kaye, the legendary paintball designer behind AGD and the Automag has returned to paintball with, in my opinion, the most exciting paintball announcement in the last few years.  He has announced plans to build a miniature paintball air compressor that will run off electricity and a cheap shop compressor (which only will run occasionally) and will be able to fill compressed air tanks to 4500psi.  The concept is simple - create a low-power, low-cost pump that will fill tanks to high pressures over a long period of time.  Current guesses are that a 68/45 could be filled in about 4 hours.  While the slow fill time will mean you can't refill a tank between games, you will be able to fill a tank overnight without paying several thousand dollars as the expected retail price is $300-$400.

For those of you who use compressed air, you know how its reliability, consistency and ease of use make it the preferred (and sometimes required) air for competitive paintball.  You also know how difficult it is to keep your tanks full when you're not at a professional field.  This new compressor solves that problem by allowing you to play (or tinker) where you like and fill your tanks at home.  With the expected cost of $0.05 an hour to operate, filling a tank will now cost twenty cents - less than the gas to drive to a paintball field or store.

I will definitely be in line to get one of these when they are released.  I'm a big fan of Tom's work at AGD (and still own some of his products) and I'm an even bigger fan of the idea of filling my compressed air tanks without going to a scuba store or paintball field.  The mini-compressor is still several months from production, but you can view a video of a prototype to see what it's all about.