Pakistan’s digital battlegrounds: The unexpected rise of esports in Pakistan

When Arslan Siddique finally got a visa to go to his first Evolution Championship Series (Evo) in Japan, in February 2019, he had to book a last-minute flight that had multiple cancellations and it took him two and a half days to land in Fukuoka, four hours before his Tekken 7 match was about to begin. Three days later, he competed in the finals against Alexandre 'AK' Laverez from the Philippines. Arslan won, and nobody understood how. Just a few months later, in August, came the international Evo 2019 in the United States, where top players from Europe and the Americas were also competing.

He came up against his old rival from Korea in the finals, Jae-Min Bae 'Knee' – by all accounts, the world's most experienced Tekken player and winner of eight previous tournaments. Arslan had previously beaten him in Japan in the semi-finals and in Dubai at a smaller scale tournament in 2018. This was the same year he won King of Fighters IV tournaments in Oman and Kuwait, often using his favourite character Ash, which he takes his gaming moniker from. In America, Arslan was the only participant in the knockout stages who was not from a high-income country, the only one who almost missed the tournament because of visa problems. His win in Japan was called a fluke, beginners' luck; a narrative that went like this: "the world didn't know about Pakistani Tekken playstyles, it was new, hence effective, but he would be figured out soon". Well, he wasn't figured out soon enough. He beat Knee 3-2.