Today we pick up where we left off with Mr. John Dresser of PbNation discussing more on the website and its impact on paintball as a whole. Pbnation currently has half a million paintball users registered to the site and the site itself houses a wealth of paintball information about paintball, the pros and industry.
Who founded PBNation?…..when was PbNation first established and who all were involved?
PbNation was founded by Tony Rieker in 2000 while he was still in high school with a borrowed credit card from his dad, Ed. His dad played in the 80′s and still plays today so you could say paintball runs in the family. They actually played a one on one “grudge match” at EMR this last year inside the castle courtyard. I don’t even remember who won, but it was great to see them both out there having fun.
Here’s a link to an old PGI article about Tony and Kyle.
http://www.p8ntballer.com/interviewcontent/20080331.shtml
I’ve personally been a member of the site since 2001 and a volunteer since 2003 or so.
John, what is your overall vision for the website and has the site fulfilled that vision?
PbNation.com is more a community than anything else. We have millions of paintball players from all walks of life coming together to learn, share and talk about all types of paintball. PbN is a place for all types of paintball players to congregate, discuss issues and share their love of the game of paintball.
PbNation hosts discussion on
every facet of paintball from playing in your backyard against a friend to playing in scenarios with thousands of people. We have manufacturer representatives and professional players talking to beginners and other experts alike. PbN offers regular players the ability to interact with people who have been in the industry for decades. I don’t know of other places where that happens.
The paintball community raised well over our $30,000 goal for Peyton Trent last year and we did it in less than 10 days. That’s testament to the power of the whole paintball community coming together. We helped alert the community to this family’s situation and the response was nothing short of overwhelming. http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3232971
We always want to do more on the site. We just launched our Field Review portion of the site which allows users to not only rate fields but also rate other reviews. The highest rated reviews then rise to the top and the lowest rated ones keep going down so the information users find the most useful is easiest to find.
We have a new badge system on the site that allows users to pick badges to help represent different things about themselves.
http://www.pbnation.com/badges.php
The site has done more than I personally ever thought any paintball site would. Virtually every type of paintball can be found on PbN. The truly beautiful thing about paintball is that it can be played in so many different ways and all of those types of discussion have a place on the site. We don’t think one type of paintball is superior. If it is played in a safe manner then we want that discussion there.
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So there you have it, Part Two with Mr John Dresser, welcome to the Catshack Reports “Hall of Fame” Mr. Dresser. We hope to have further conversations with John so stay tuned.
Well its likely most already know their own way to Pbnation, but just in case we decided to post up the URL one last time for new people to the sport to check out http://www.pbnation.com/
Here’s a video of John with some of his paintball markers
Article and photos courtesy of John Dresser
