Recently Matias Otero, founder of Brave Newbies Inc., decided to step down from leader of the corporation and appointed a new leader, Lychton Kondur in his place.Brave Newbies Inc. is a corporation that promotes itself to the newer players amongst new eden in an attempt to show them not only how the game works but also how to maximize “fun per hour rather then isk per hour”. Recently I sat down with Lychton Kondur to discuss all things brave.
flatterpillo > hi there
Lychton Kondur > o/
Q. flatterpillo > You were recently chosen to be the new CEO of Brave newbies, correct?
A. Lychton Kondur > Yes, that’s correct
Q. flatterpillo > how have you found the job so far?
A. Lychton Kondur > Well, the biggest significant difference is that my evemail inbox is constantly full. The information deluge is pretty formidable. Also, I realized that I didn’t understand some of the softer alliance functions as well as I thought I did when I was the Director of Internal Affairs. The divisional directors have been very helpful in helping me understand some of that nuance though, so it’s been a good transition.
Q. flatterpillo > as Director of Internal Affairs were you effectively Matias Otero’s 2nd in command?
A. Lychton Kondur > Not exactly, for operational purposes, we run a newbie management council with pretty good separation of duties for each division. Internal Affairs was a “watch the watchers” position / with a lot of metagame management. (API scrubs, Comms, etc.)
Q. flatterpillo > why do you think Matias Otero choose you to take over when he departed?
A. Lychton Kondur > When Matias Otero first broached the idea of stepping down,the entire council spent a good bit of time establishing selection criteria and compiling the CEO “short list.” I can only speak to that part, because my council directors nominated me. There’s no real sense of tenure in a nine-month-old mega corporation, so I’d like to think I established myself as someone trustworthy who likes to blow up spaceships
Q. flatterpillo > It is said Matias Otero stepped down because he felt he could not run the Corporation effectively with the limited time he had to play, do you think this is the truth or is there possibly another reason?
A. Lychton Kondur > No that’s precisely the reason. His real life itinerary really filled up and he just didn’t have the time to actively engage in day-to-day management. The Council did a tremendous job running with it, but in the end, he felt that it would be better to have a more active face in the spotlight. Now, that’s not to say he’s gone. He’s more like our Queen of England now. It’s a great emeritus role and it’s unburdened by alliance management duties.
Q. flatterpillo > Brave newbies have recently deployed into Syndicate, who’s decision was this and what are your goals from this deployment?
A. Lychton Kondur > the plan has been developed for a few weeks now, and just so happened to be finalised as I was tapped to ascend. Placid is a great region for us to grow and develop, but we also wanted to get people out into situations where more things go boom. As you probably know, we’ve maintained an alliance presence in syndicate for 2 months now as well, but with BNI maintaining the lowsec campus. This deployment was designed to support our nullsec alliance corps while giving our newbros things to shoot while teaching them about the mechanics involved with pvp in null sec.
Q. flatterpillo > With your recent deployment to Syndicate and your open attitude to newer players many have compared you to how Goonswarm started off, do you think this is a fair assessment?
A. Lychton Kondur > I honestly couldn’t tell you with any certainty. This is my first character in game ever, and Brave has a very unique history in its short lifespan. I do find it funny that when we first started, the going rumour was that we were all TEST alts. I think that while we may show attributes that may be similar to Goonswarm or anyone for that matter, Brave’s development has been pretty unique since riding the Asakai surge into our current size. Also, the CCP spotlight when we were 2 weeks old was probably the greatest catalyst for our growth. In terms of culture, I think we are more of a rag-tag group that swarmed together for fun and bourbon-infused PVP. They (Goonswarm) have their own dedicated community from their forums, which is a pretty different distinction. Fun guys to fight though, that’s for sure!
Q. flatterpillo > How did you first hear about brave newbies? What kind of experiences did you have in those initial days? Does the corporation still remain this identity to this day or do you think it’s evolved into something else?
A. Lychton Kondur > Well, fun fact, I was member number two in BNI. Matias had just created BNI and I joined 8 minutes later. Then we hid in a station in Imya for about an hour from a terrifyingly tanked hurricane. We had absolutely no clue what to do, how to fit things, and we loved every minute of it. Fun per hour is not a random Brave Alliance meme that we use for a talking point. It’s literally part of what we do every time we undock. Super serious pilots and some vets find it irritating sometimes but hey, if you’re willing to plex tank your account, then you should be maximizing the fun you get out of this game. That’s the truest form of sandbox gameplay, and a type of controlled anarchy that keeps things interesting in day-to-day operations. Now, as we grow, we are starting to “mature” in a sense, but it’s more about having a better understanding of the game mechanics and having our members better understand what they want their role to be in New Eden. I don’t think we are moving in the direction toward getting all serious about things, because at the end of the day, games are supposed to be fun. I think we’ll stick to that formula.
Q. flatterpillo > Do you see Brave newbies taking Sovereignty in the not too distant future?
A. Lychton Kondur > That’s a loaded question, haha. And it’s one that has been asked a lot recently. What I can tell you is that if Brave gets to a point where we believe getting into the SOV game would be fun for our capsuleers, then it would obviously be a possibility but i want to stress that currently, SOV grinding is a very methodical process, and I don’t like the notion of us telling all of our pilots to stop having fun and to get their grinding hats on. That’s the antithesis of Brave as a whole.
Q. flatterpillo > so no immediate plans then?
A. Lychton Kondur > As of right now, all of our safeties are set to yellow. We will not enter into that portion of the game until it’s beneficial for our alliance and fun for our members to engage in. Or until we get bored and decide to screw around with it.
Q. flatterpillo > Would you say its fair to say that brave newbies has a close tie to Reddit?
A. Lychton Kondur > yes and no
Q. flatterpillo > how so?
A. Lychton Kondur > Obviously we were created because of post Asakai interest that originated on Reddit, but most of our internal growth happened because of CCP’s spotlight, some ridiculously good propaganda developed by some of our pilots such as Markonius Porkbutte, and our willingness to get into fights and die gloriously while half of our guys are salvaging wrecks instead of shooting. The chaos is wonderful. We do maintain a strong Reddit presence now, but our identities are solely about New Eden. We may use Reddit for a lot of stuff, but I wouldn’t call us a Reddit based corporation.
Q. flatterpillo > Who would you say is Brave newbies biggest adversary is and who are your biggest allies?
A. Lychton Knodur > we don’t play the game that way.
Q. flatterpillo > where do you see Brave newbies in a years time?
A. Lychton Kondur > It really depends on the content options available to us at that time. I think thing’s are going to be interesting when we hit our 1 year mark in January. A lot of our pilots are on new toons, so the aggregate skill level will be fun to see. Instead of 150 man rifter blobs, we might have fleets that look like trouble. And we’ll be more than happy to hug it out with our space friends.
Q. flatterpillo > If you were offered SOV without the grind in exchange for being part of a coalition would you accept it? Or would you prefer to keep Brave newbies as it is right now?
A. Lychton Kondur > Brave is brave. We’ve been afforded a few opportunities to size up, but I strongly agree with Matias’ intent on being neutral to all that and just shoot at everyone. Granted, we have neighbours that we aren’t necessarily hostile too, but that’s much different than getting into that type of metagame.
Q. flatterpillo > with your open door policy do you not worry about spies?
A. Lychton Kondur > That’s actually a really good question. Thanks for asking.
The only hard rules we have about spies are that we don’t accept empty applications or from folks that have an active wardec against us. There’s really nothing to hide from people because we are pretty open about what we do. Now, if we find active ears in our comms while we are fighting, then yeah, they’re getting the boot. But otherwise, there’s no real point. With all the 3rd party tools or one alt character, you’ll know what’s going on within the collective all the serious decisions are held tightly by our council and alliance corp leadership, who by the way, do an awesome job helping me steer this gigantic blob.
Q. flatterpillo > thank you very much for your time, I’m sure we will hear of many great things done by brave newbies in the future, would you like to add anything before we end?
A. Lychton Kondur > Actually I would. One of the coolest things about being in BRAVE is the immediate jump to content. When I was 18 hours old, I had no idea I would end up in this position today. Similarly, our next great pilot is probably on day 3 of his trial account and still doesn’t know that Poitot is the only named system in syndicate. But the beauty of the sandbox is that the possibilities are endless and with the collateral of 5 thousand members behind you, things can get interesting. The video propaganda I mentioned earlier highlights this ideal very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE9lVhLNmcI.
Brave Newbies currently is based out of Barleguet and is currently deployed to Syndicate. They specialise in helping new pilots experience the fun in eve with fleets of Talwar’s (a cheap and easy to fly destroyer) roaming around New Eden every day. I would strongly recommend any high sec players looking to get into PVP or newer players in general to check out Brave Newbies Inc. for the fun of PVP without the strains of Sovereignty.
