“Tekken is headed in the right direction in India; young, hungry, and dedicated youngsters are rising rapidly in the scene”: Abhinav Tejan

With the presence of titles like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Free Fire, and Valorant, the Indian fighting games scene often goes unnoticed by a majority of the nation’s esports community.

It’s quite a niche scene to get into but has been growing substantially over the last couple of years. Though it’s still not a mainstream genre in Indian esports, the community is hopeful that it will be as popular as any other shooter in the nation one day.

In an exclusive interview with Abhishek Mallick of Sportskeeda Esports, the FGC veteran Abhinav Tejan opened up about some of his hopes and aspirations for the next generation of Tekken players.

He was recently signed by Heroes Official and is gearing up to give it his all in the upcoming National Esports Championship 2021, which is being hosted by the Esports Federation of India.

Here is an excerpt of the conversation.

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Q. Abhinav, I would really love your take on the Indian Tekken scene, and where it exactly stands in 2021.

Abhinav: If we specifically talk about the competitive side of the Tekken scene, nothing major has been happening in the scene lately because the fighter heavily relies on offline tournaments. Before the pandemic, most of the high-skill players avoided playing even online casual matches.

As for me, I always did train offline, but now being forced to the “online-only” format has not at all been an easy transition.

More importantly, another reason for the Indian Tekken esports scene to be down in the dumps is that a lot of the top players in the region have completely stopped participating in tournaments as they only prefer offline events.

However, the non-competitive side of Tekken has been doing really well, and it has seen a surge of new players in recent months.

Q The pandemic-induced lockdown took a heavy toll on the nation’s esports scene, where most tournaments had to switch to an online format to keep in accordance with health guidelines. How was the Tekken scene affected by COVID-19? What were some of the adjustments and compromises that both players and TOs needed to make to remain relevant?

Abhinav: Not many will believe this, but the pandemic-induced lockdown has actually had some positive impact on Indian Tekken. There has been a rapid increase in the number of new players in the game, and the “online-only” format has aided in bringing in a lot of new members to the community.

The lockdown has also provided players with enough time and opportunity to work on their mix-ups and overall gameplay. This in turn allowed Indian Tekken players to grow significantly in terms of skills, and I truly believe that many players were able to level up quite a bit during this time.

Another positive that the lockdown had on Tekken was that it allowed tournament organizers to host multiple events one after the other. The offline competitions often took months of planning and preparation to execute, whereas the online format didn’t have such hassles.

Additionally, this has given all the players an opportunity and a platform to showcase their skills, gain tournament experience and a motive to keep grinding and improving on their skills.

The online format has also given all the players a chance to connect with each other. The offline scene was very segregated and as India is a big country, it was impossible to travel, play and connect with each other.

Nowadays, we see almost all the players interacting with the rest of the community members, irrespective of the region that they come from. This ultimately strengthened the Tekken community as people are opting in to play and interact more with each other.

This has helped a lot of newcomers to actually learn from some of the best in the country. Because of this, we are seeing many young players rise in the Tekken scene, which was not the case before.

However, as I said earlier, though the amateur scene for Tekken took off because of the lockdown, the top players suffered quite a bit and lost their way of income because major offline tournaments are not happening anymore.

Sure, there are a lot of online tournaments happening right now, but their prize pool comes nowhere close to what the offline events had to offer. Moreover, internet lag is another big evil because of which most professional players chose to not participate in the tournament.

No matter how good your internet connection is, there will always be a bit of input lag in the game when playing online. Hence, for the professional players, the gameplan and strategy changes completely and they need to calculate input lag in their mix-up combos.

It is really hard for offline players to adjust to online.

Q. You have been quite active off-late, grinding your way up in the DOJOs online tournament which is hosted by the Bharatiya Tekken Party. Tell us a bit about the event and the competitive atmosphere that you faced.

Abhinav: DOJOs is an online Tekken tournament that takes place every Sunday. It’s organized by Malay “Yoddhaaa” Singh and is currently a part of Tekken Online Challenge 2021, South Asia.

Hence, if you play a DOJO event, you earn points depending upon your placements in the tournament, which will later help you in qualifying for Tekken Online Challenge Finals at the end of this year.

As it is an online tournament, it has been quite hard for me to keep up with the competition as I am much more adept in the offline format. However, I had to gradually adjust my playstyle and condition myself to the “online-only” environment.

Q. What are your thoughts on the quality of upcoming esports talent in India, not just in Tekken but also in other fighting games that are popular in the region?

Abhinav: Well, to be honest, I don’t know much about other esports in India. As I said earlier, the competition in the community has increased, and I dedicate most of my time to just learning Tekken.

But if you ask me about the upcoming talent in Tekken in India, then it feels really good to say that it’s heading in the right direction.

A lot of newcomers who are young, very dedicated, and very skillful are rising in the scene. Some names like Hitesh Khorwal and Shubham Khorwal come to mind; both are brothers and they have been performing exceptionally well in the tournaments lately.

Hitesh even won one of the biggest fighting game tournaments in 2020 which was NODWIN Gaming’s KO Fight Night, where he defeated me in the grand finals. Moreover, Loveneet, Shubham, Hitesh, and I have been practicing with each other for the past two years, so we know each other's gameplay very well.

Hence, it becomes really difficult to play against them in tournaments, and then I usually play on hard reads a lot in such scenarios.

Q. With Guilty Gear: Strive finally live, the game has instantly become a big hit in the region. Do you feel that Strive will have a significant effect on the Tekken esports scene in terms of viewership and community engagement? Or will the former be creating a completely new community for itself?

Abhinav: I have seen some Tekken players play Guilty Gear: Strive when it came out, but as the two titles are completely different from each other, I don’t think we will see much interaction between these games and the communities.

I don’t know much about the Strive scene, but from what I have heard, a lot of players playing the game are old Guilty Gear veterans. However, a few of them are from other fighting games like Mortal Kombat.

Q. With esports and content creation becoming a more mainstream career option for today’s youth, what can you tell us about the talent pool of the Indian FGC and how significantly it has grown over the last couple of years?

Abhinav: I have seen immense growth in the level of Tekken talent in India. If you look back four years ago when Tekken 7 came out, most of the players used to be casuals, and the level of gameplay was nothing compared to the top players in the world.

However, Loveneet and I started taking this game seriously and began to travel to international events with our own money. Bit by bit, we started improving, and our placements nationally and overseas gradually began to improve.

In 2018, we started inviting Hitesh and Shubham to our offline sessions as well, and now with four dedicated players in our offline sessions, we started improving immensely. Now, we are at a point where we can stand at the same level as some of the top Tekken players in the world.

Recently, a devoted player and content creator named Hans from our community has been rewarded with the financial support of ANT esports. This was a direct result of the glorious rise of our community among the ranks of esports in India.

Q. You will be representing Heroes Official in the National Esports Championship 2021, which is being hosted by the Esports Federation of India. What are some of your expectations going into the competition? How are your preparations coming along?

Abhinav: Since Heroes Official has been backing me and sponsoring me, I find a lot of comfort in their support as I no longer have to constantly think about my financial situation and can focus completely on my skills and performance.

Heroes Officials has been helping other esports athletes as well. MOIN from PES is one of them, and they have also recently formed their roster in Call of Duty: Mobile and Battlegrounds Mobile India.

Their support is the reason why I am itching to go all out in the NESC 2021 without thinking about a million other things that would just throw me off my game. Apart from the financial support, Heroes backed me up both mentally and emotionally, and I am not pressurized to perform every single time I pick up the controller.

Q. What are your post-pandemic plans? Is there anything special you have in store for the coming months?

Abhinav: It has been one and a half years since I was able to travel to an international tournament. These events have always been the yardstick with which we were able to check our levels against the top players in the world.

I would love to travel to these tournaments every few months to check our progress; now I am just itching to perform, to go out and see how much I have improved over the last year.

Now, with Heroes Officials as my sponsor, they will be supporting me in any way they can to help me travel to these events. So I am just waiting for the lockdown to end and start putting my passport to use.

The last tournament I went to was EVO Japan, which is one of the hardest tournaments for Tekken in the world; I placed 9th in that event out of 950 players who participated in it. So please look forward to my endeavors as I grind my way to an international trophy.