Just a few short years ago, the game of choice among my friends was paintball. They’d gear up and head out to the nearest paintball field to shoot each other with exploding balls of paint. As they grew up, so did their game. The ones who still play live action shooting games like this have moved on from paintball and are now into Airsoft.

Airsoft is similar to paintball but it uses plastic BBs instead of balls of paint. There are also some differences in game style which have to do with tactics, terrain and equipment. People in the sport have traded up their paintball guns for more advanced military-style equipment like KWA guns and echo1 airsoft guns. The differences may seem slight to an outsider but they’re a big deal to the people involved in these games.

Although people of any age may be interested in playing Airsoft, this seems to be more of an adult game than paintball is. Not to say that adults don’t go paintballing but those adults who are really serious about paintball tend to eventually move up into the more advanced skill-based game of Airsoft. The difference is primarily in the image; paintball purports to be all about fun whereas Airsoft admits to being about warfare play.

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