2025 Recap — A Reflection of My Fighting Game Journey

Hey all, in today’s article, I will be writing about my journey as a fighting game/Tekken player throughout 2025. I will be talking about the different experiences, challenges, and accomplishments I have made in 2025, and I will talk about what 2026 looks like for me. Hope you all enjoy and happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! 2025 was an eventful year for me when it comes to Tekken and fighting games. In the span of one year, I joined many offline tournaments, went to two different countries to play fighting games, started to take content creation seriously (working on my consistency though 😅), and learned many new skills to help improve myself as a player. This article will be a quick one where I reflect on my fighting game experiences in 2025. Hope you all enjoy!

2025 as a player

POPU Weekend Brawl 2025

Throughout 2025, I was fortunate enough to compete in multiple offline tournaments in Indonesia, while also playing a lot of games with the community. In total, I joined six offline events, four of which are local tournaments in Jakarta, and two of them are overseas, as well as playing in a 10v10 online team battle exhibition:

Notable Events and Placements

• SEA Team Battle Malaysia vs Indonesia, January 2025 — Team Indonesia Win
• EnterKomputer Tekken Showdown 2, February 2025 — 9th place
• Tatakai Tuesday 95, April 2025 — 1st place
• Tekken Breakpoint Tournament, July 2025 — 17th place
• Thunder Throne Tournament Season 2, August 2025 — 9th place
• POPU Weekend Brawl 2025, August 2025 — 17th place
• SEA Major 2025, October 2025 — 17th Place
• Tongkrongan Tekken Brawl, October 2025 — 17th Place

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit sad about my placement (a lot of 17th place 😅). This year definitely hit a wall in my skill as a player, where I started to doubt my own skill, and I struggled to adapt to Season 2 of Tekken 8. The silver lining behind these losses is that I learned a lot about myself as a player, and I realized the skills that I need to work on to improve (more on that later). If I have to choose which tournament is my most memorable, it would probably be Tatakai Tuesday 95, since it’s the first offline tournament that I ever won for Tekken 8, so it will definitely have a special place for me. Overall, I’m very grateful that I’m part of a very active local community that holds many offline tournaments, as well as being able to travel overseas and compete there as well.

Playing Tekken Overseas

Tatakai Tuesday 95

I was fortunate that I was able to visit two countries in 2025, where I experienced the Tekken/fighting games scene of each country. In April 2025, I visited **Japan** with my family, and I was able to experience playing Tekken in Japan, both online and offline. I have the opportunity to compete in Tatakai Tuesday, as well as visit a local gathering at Shotbar Lucy, where I get to play against the local Tekken players and even some pro Japanese players. Hopefully, in 2026, I can visit Japan again and play some good Tekken (Evo Japan 2026? 👀).

SEA Major 2025

The second country I visited was Singapore with my friends. This trip was competitive-focused as I was competing in **SEA Major 2025.** This would be my first international major event I competed in for Tekken 8. What makes this trip so memorable for me is that I get to travel with my friends, meeting new people, and the fact that I get to compete overseas. I finished 17th in SEA Major and learned a lot, so I will forever be grateful to be given this opportunity.

Skills I learned

In 2025, I learned a lot of new skills that I need to work on as a competitor. This year, there have been a lot of instances where I feel lost as a player since I wasn’t performing as well as I wanted to. But the silver lining behind this is that I found many skills that I can work on to improve my play. The key skills that I learned that I need to work on consistently are:

• Have a strong layer one gameplan: I need to go back to basics and have a strong layer one gameplan that I can confidently rely on when competing in a FT2 tournament match, especially in pools.
• Be confident in your own play: There are a lot of instances where I second-guess myself when I want to make a decision. I need to be more confident and make decisions quickly, and be okay if the decision I make is the wrong one. Remember, it’s better to make a decision and be wrong rather than make no decision at all.
• Nerves will always exist; learn to control them: After competing in multiple tournaments, tournament nerves have always been present, which can hinder my tournament performance. I have to accept that nerves will always exist; I just have to find a way to maintain and control them during high-pressure situations.
• Fix my bad habits and flowcharts: After playing a lot, I noticed that I have bad habits that I always do. The main ones are playing too passively, sidestepping too much, and delaying my timing too much. Recently, I think I’ve gotten better at playing more actively, but my bad habits of sidestepping and delaying my timing too much are still present, and those are the two habits I aim to fix in 2026.

These are the main skills that I need to continue working on in 2026. Have I made progress so far? Hard to tell. But am I even close to achieving these skills? Not even close. So for 2026, I will continue practicing and become the best player that I can be.

2025 as a Content Creator

My favorite article I wrote in 2025

2025 was a pretty good year for me as a content creator. I wrote a total of 3 articles in 2025. The three articles that I wrote in 2025 were mainly about my fighting game experiences, such as my tournament runs. However, one article I’m super proud of was about **Fighting Games and Third Places, where I basically talk about the correlation between the Third Place concept and how it applies to fighting games. I’m proud of this article because it’s related to an aspect of fighting games that I care about, which is community. In 2026, I also started working on my YouTube channel and made two videos so far. The videos are relatively simple ideas, which are a [FT5 set vs ONIC | RTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MySeH-CqmmY) Tekken and a [quick recap of my SEA Major 2025 trip + some of my tournament run matches.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3AjPFjYBOk)** I know two isn’t a huge number, but I’m glad that I even made two to begin with.

[embed]PlaceKZ Tekken Player From Indonesiawww.youtube.com

In 2026, I will try my best to make more content in both writing and video content. I started writing about fighting games in 2024 and enjoyed creating such content since I realized that there is not that much written content about fighting games. It is also a way for me to keep practicing writing and research skills that I learned during University (wrote a lot of essays 😆). I found writing to be a way for me to express my passion for fighting games quickly, since I can just open my laptop and start writing and riffing ideas that I have, and I plan to keep writing in 2026! For YouTube, I plan to work on more videos as a way for me to not only express my creativity, but also to practice my editing skills. Right now, I’m still brainstorming ideas about what YouTube videos I want to make. But I’m hopeful that I can think about something interesting to make!

Another type of content I want to try and get back into is livestreaming. I dabbled in livestreaming before, and it was a fun thing to do while I played fighting games. I used to stream on Twitch when I was in the UK, but since I moved back to Indonesia, I’ve been trying YouTube as a platform to stream. In the future, I think I’m gonna stick to YouTube since I want to try and keep both my videos and my livestreams under one platform. I don’t know when the next stream is gonna be, but be sure to be on the lookout.

What I’m grateful for

Shoutouts to the Jakarta Tekken Community

When it comes to fighting games, there’s a lot that I’m grateful for in 2025, such as the opportunities to travel overseas to play and have the time to compete. But one thing that I’m most grateful for is the fighting game community, both offline and online. Without going into much detail, 2025 was a mixed bag outside of fighting games, and there are times when I feel very down and lost. However, fighting games/Tekken and the community helped me clear my mind. I said this before, but fighting games have been a huge part of my life, and being able to enjoy this passion with people from all around the world has been a blessing to me. I’ve met a lot of awesome people from all around the world just because we enjoy the same video game, many of whom I consider close friends. In a way, fighting games helped me overcome the hardships I have in life, and I’m sure many can relate to this. So shoutouts to the fighting game community, both locally and overseas, you guys know who you are.

Looking forward to 2026

I don’t know what image to put here so here’s square Tom

I’m hopeful that 2026 will be a great year for me in fighting games. I have many goals I want to achieve this year, both as a competitor and a content creator. I will keep grinding and be the best player that I can be, create more content in 2026 (Writing, YouTube, and live-streaming), and I will try to play more fighting games. These are the goals that I can think of right now that I want to achieve in 2026. I’m gonna try my best to make sure that I achieve them! Here’s to a great 2026, happy New Year, everyone!

If you guys haven’t read my previous article!

• ***My first international major! — SEA Major 2025 Recap***
• ***Fighting Games and Third Place***
• ***A Glimpse into the Indonesian Tekken Community: A 64-Man Tekken 8 Dojo Experience and What I Learn***
• ***It’s been a while😅 — updates on my Tekken journey and the tournaments I joined***
• ***It’s Been a While (Again): My Tekken/Fighting Game journey until now (SEA Team Battle, Japan Trip, Tekken 8 Season 2, and TWT 2025!)***
• ***Arcade Sticks: I Ramble About Why Arcade Sticks Are Cool and Why I Love Them***

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