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Meet Scott Novis of Bravous in East Valley

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Novis.

Scott, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Most of my career, I have been involved in invention and innovation. I have two engineer degrees from ASU, am named on 11 patents. I had worked in the video game industry for almost a decade when I saw a massive shift in the video game industry. Arcades and local area network stores were failing. We were losing our familiar venue for experiencing and sharing the best video games with our friends. Around 2005 I felt the best games were on home video consoles, not stand up arcade cabinets. PC games were overly technical and challenging for casual fans. I imagined a living room full of TV’s, video game consoles, and enough controllers and copies of games for everyone to play. Game Truck was born out of the idea that a living room on wheels was the best possible place to play the best games with your friends.

I launched the company in 2006, franchised in 2008, and by 2009 we had entertained more than 10 million children hosted at 250,000 events nationwide. About the same time I started GameTruck, I was also heavily involved in Little League Baseball. Over 15 years, I volunteered first as a coach, then as a board member, and finally as league president. Both my time at GameTruck and my time spent working with kids gave me perspective on how video games and how we raised our children were evolving.

In 2018, I took what I had learned from my experiences with Disney and GameTruck, and I launched Bravous to create a new kind of esports program. Our goal is to create a fun, social activity that is appropriate for youth who have fallen out of traditional sports and are looking for a community that shares their interest in competitive gaming.

Has it been a smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road! But, I saw this Harley-Davidson shirt once that read, “If life throws you a curve… lean into it.” The challenge with launching a new concept in a new industry is awareness. Grant Cordone talks about this in his book The 10X Rule. Your most significant problem is obscurity. On top of that, parents have a lot of fear around video games. Modern media is having a field day with the negative stereotypes of video gaming. So when you go to a school, a church, or a city and start to talk about video games… you have to be prepared to have the door slammed in your face.

While I admit that no one slammed a door in my face, I vividly recall one of my first “sales calls” for Bravous. We were meeting with Brooklyn Community Services. BCS does an amazing job of helping kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods find a footing and a path to a better future. For example, I love their YMI program – It’s the Young Male Initiative. They help teenage boys find purpose and value in serving others by connecting them with mentors. At-risk youth are paired with other men from their communities who are making a living. The program is having a tremendous positive impact on these aimless youths.

Our New York franchise does a lot of work with BCS during end of school year celebrations. When BCS called to book a game trailer, we told them about our new Bravous Esports program. They invited us to their headquarters in the Bronx to tell them more.

Let me paint a picture for you. I’m sitting in the basement of a housing project. This is not a meeting room or a conference room, but an “activity” room that was probably new in the 1950s. Into this rather dark and dingy spaces walks the suit-wearing director of BCS, an exceptionally well educated and dignified man. Without even saying hello, the first thing he says to me and my partner David is, “If you are here to talk about video games, this meeting is over.”

How would you like to start your first sales call with that?

As it turned out, we did not talk not about video games but rather about connecting people. It just happens that we use video games to do it. BCS became our first customer in New York. We are currently running four programs a day, five days a week, and demand continues to grow for our programs.

Please tell us about Bravous. What should we know?
Bravous Esports is a company that provides programs, staff, and equipment for competitive video game events. Esports is the fastest growing sport in the world, and it has a global audience. Our specialty is the recreational or community end of the spectrum. Most Esports companies focus on PC based, professional, internet, ultracompetitive competitive gaming.

In case you did not know, esports is the term for competitive video game competition. Think of it as a Track Meet. There’s not one type of competition, but a dozen. Different people care about the high jump, others about paul vault, and still others about sprints. Esports is like that. Esports is not limited to electronic versions of physical sports like football or soccer. Some of the biggest games in the world that compete as “esports” are fantasy mobile online battle arena (MOBA) games Dota 2, and League of Legends. The online shooter game Overwatch, created by Blizzard/ Activision, held its world championship at the Barkley Arena in New York and sold out in a few days.

While Professional Esports is exciting, my focus is closer to home. In the last 50 years, no power five conference (Big 10, SEC, Pac12, etc.) has added a sports team. Yet over that same period of time, the population of the United States has doubled, and the number of students attending these universities has tripled. Kids’ access to sports has all but collapsed in this country. When kids fall out of sports, they fall into video games, mostly online video games. Online video games isolate players to keep them safe. While they may be safe, they are not well socialized.

The idea behind Bravous is to create compelling in-person programming to help reconnect isolated and disconnected players. In short, it’s not about the video games, but rather about the bonding that comes from competing together, face to face.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think Phoenix is a tremendous place to start a business like mine. There is a fantastic entrepreneurial community. I can get almost anywhere in the world on one flight from Sky Harbor Airport. We are close enough to California without having to be there, and we never have trouble convincing people to come to a meeting in the winter.

I also think people are open-minded and friendly here. I have joked that Phoenix is a second-generation frontier town. When I grew up in Michigan, everyone drew their lineage back to a country. In Phoenix, a decent number of people come from other states. That means they chose to be here. They are optimistic and open. They believe a better future is possible. I love that about this town.

Pricing:

  • Enrollment in an esports program for kids costs the same as a regular sport program, about $200.

Contact Info:

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