Durban's Tekken champion, Jaiden Naidoo.
Image: Supplied.
WITH wind in his pocket and hope in his heart, Durban gamer Jaiden "JJ" Naidoo took a bus to Cape Town chasing a dream; and returned home as a Red Bull Golden Letters Tekken 8 champion.
Naidoo travelled more than 1 600km to Comic Con Cape Town, where he battled through qualifiers and a stacked field of competitors to claim victory in one of the country’s key fighting game tournaments.
At one stage he thought it was game over, when his controller broke during the qualifier rounds.
“I thought this is probably a sign that I'm not gonna win this tournament,” he said. “Then my friend said, ‘don’t worry, I’ll give you my controller and you can play.’”
He continued and his perseverance paid off. “It was kind of just through fate,” he said.
The win wasn’t just personal. It also shone a spotlight on Durban’s small but fierce gaming community; a scene often overshadowed by Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Unlike their counterparts in those cities, local gamers don’t always have sponsorships or steady tournament circuits. Sometimes it’s just people trying to keep things going with what they have.
“They always think Durban has no scene or anything, but we have a very passionate scene over here, they must just give us a chance,” Naidoo said.
For many aspiring gamers in Durban, the biggest opponent is not always on-screen — it is the cost of travel, equipment and access to national competitions.
Another dent in the scene has been the shift from older consoles to newer-generation systems. It sounds simple, but it changed everything.
“You can’t play the latest Tekken if you don’t have the newest console,” he said.
The issue runs deeper than hardware.
Naidoo believes many local companies don’t understand that gaming is a huge industry and a viable career path. “I don’t think that many Durban companies actually see esports as a sport,” he said.
He says many friendships have been forged across provinces because of Tekken and that they share strategies, updates, and discoveries as the game evolves.
“You definitely need to have friends that are also playing the game a lot and showing you stuff that you probably don't know,” he said. That's crucial, he says, because every year there are changes and without sharing you fall behind quickly.
Naidoo’s love of Tekken - a 3D fighting game born in Japan in the 1990s - started in Durban arcades, where he learned by watching and playing against older competitors.
By the age of 11, he was hooked.
“I had to learn Tekken through the arcade because my mom refused to buy me a console,” he said.
Sian Perumal, his mother, laughed as she remembered those years.
“I was so anti the PlayStation,” she said.
Naidoo says Tekken remains one of the most popular fighting game franchises in the world. “It’s kind of a piece of history,” he said.
He explained how competitive gaming had changed dramatically from the arcade days, with newer consoles and equipment making the scene far more expensive.
Despite his win, getting to Cape Town was a challenge. Flights to Cape Town were simply too expensive and his only option was to catch a bus.
It took him almost 30 hours to get to the Mother City, leaving him exhausted before the tournament had even begun.
But again, the Tekken community stepped up for one of their own.
“The accommodation actually just came through having very good friends that were willing to help me,” he said. Those friends he met at Comic Con Johannesburg, where he first built connections that would later carry him to Cape Town. He also credits the support of the Tekken community in Durban for his success.
Naidoo wanted to study graphic design after matric, but says AI has made him reconsider, and he is now leaning toward cybersecurity. But he always knew that Tekken would be a major part of his life. These days he walks a lot to keep fit and ensure that his reflexes are good.
That's because competitive gaming required mental discipline and balance, not just hours in front of a screen.
“Esport is a mind sport, like chess. You have to exercise, get out there and keep yourself in a good mental space,” he said.
Since leaving school he worked various jobs and is currently not employed, but said tournament winnings have sometimes outperformed regular income.
“When Tekken 8 released in 2023 and I won the first couple of tournaments, I realised it was paying a little bit better than my job,” he said.
He believes finding sponsorship is the next major step toward becoming a professional gamer.
Ultimately he wants to play against the best in the world at the Evolution Championship Series (Evo), the biggest stage in fighting games.
“Every Tekken player’s dream ultimately is to play at EVO,” he said.