Pakman is a gaming influencer on the rise who nearly gave up on his dreams of content creation despite streaming every single day for four years. Now boasting over 1 million followers on TikTok, he spoke with us about his journey to stardom and his goals for the future as part of Dexerto’s Rising Stars interview series.
Taha ‘Pakman’ Khokhar grew up in Canada, but now lives in Dubai with goals to become the “face of gaming” in the region. While he’s enjoying the fruits of his success now, his status as a budding gaming star follows years of hard work.
Pakman told us that he always loved playing video games and watching content creators as a child, specifically idolizing the folks over at Machinima. Little did he know that, as an adult, he’d end up working with that same company — and it’s all thanks to a specific purchase from his father.
“I’ve always played games all my life, from Sonic to Mario to Crash Bandicoot growing up,” he explained. “And around 2009, I used to play a lot of Call of Duty. My dad bought me a Dazzle, which is one of those old PVRs to start recording stuff. And right at that moment I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to start making content.’
“I started making content on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I just fell in love with it, making videos. Even though they weren’t really getting any views, it was fun. It made me feel like my favorite YouTubers, which at the time were all the Machinima guys.”
In the early 2010s, Pakman elevated his content from basic gameplay and commentary videos to things like ‘Top 5 Plays’ lists — and that was when he got approached by Machinima. However, he was forced to step back from the internet for a number of years due to personal reasons, but he continued to play games.
Pakman streamed every day for 4 years straight
During the global health crisis in 2020, Pakman decided that he would return to making gaming content… but although his parents supported him, their old-fashioned views clashed with his dream.
“Over the last four and a half years is where I started saying, ‘I’m going to start focusing on content and I’m going to make this work.’ And, no one really believed in me, except for my family. And even then, it was a little bit tough. Initially, I had to leave my house because an ultimatum was given to me, which was, ‘As long as you’re under our roof, find work or get out,'” he told us.
“It wasn’t out of hate or anything. It was just that my parents grew up in a different era. They didn’t understand that you can make money playing video games online. So, I left the house two days later and continued chasing my dream.”
Pakman took their ultimatum seriously and buckled down, dedicating himself 100% to his goal. From November 2020 to April 2021, he streamed every single day, took online classes for a cyber security degree five days a week, and worked six days a week at a car dealership. His busy schedule meant that he was sacrificing his health, admitting that he was running on “three hours of sleep a night for six months.”
“It was rough, to say the least,” he laughed. “But it also caused a lot of good things to happen, where my work ethic was being seen by people.”
How one video changed Pakman’s life forever
His hard work paid off big-time. After six months of this nonstop grind, Pakman was able to transition to being a full-time content creator after getting laid off at his job due to the pandemic. He’s been pursuing this as his main career for the past four years, many of which saw him stream every single day.
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This might seem like a mammoth undertaking to most, but Pakman says he loves making content so much that he never really had days where he dreaded going live. However, there was a point when he considered quitting this path after hitting a plateau.
“In the early days before I went fulltime, about five months in, there was a point where I was done. I was burnt out, not getting enough sleep, not getting anything done. It just didn’t seem like anything was going anywhere. That night I was like, ‘You know what? f*** it. One last goal. Let me just put my heart and soul into this video.’
“I spent no time sleeping that night, pretty much. I took my time with the video. I posted the video. I slept. And literally an hour later, I woke up to notification after notification. And that was the video that started blowing up.”
Pakman becomes Dubai Police’s first-ever gaming ambassador
The video that skyrocketed him to fame as ‘Pakman’ was a ‘message to the haters,’ where he addressed the negative comments he received online. Since then, he’s reached 25,000 subscribers on YouTube, 1.4 million followers on TikTok and 67,000 followers on Twitch, where he streams a variety of shooting games like Counter-Strike and Call of Duty.
His ultimate goal is to become the “face of gaming” in the Middle East — but he also wants to support his family, which includes spoiling his father.
“A lot of it had to do with just being motivated to the point where I wanted to do this not only for myself, but for my wife, my parents, my siblings. I wanted to give them a good life. That was my biggest goal and it has always been, and it still is,” he told us.
“I want to be at a point where I can retire my dad. He’s taking care of us all our life, giving us everything we want. I want to be able to do that for him. you never know when that time is going to come where he might not be around. I want to be able to be at a point where I can give him everything he wants.”
Since then, Pakman has become the first gaming ambassador for the Dubai Police, where he helps elevate gaming culture in the country by supporting their sponsored esports tournaments, which include games like Street Fighter 6, Fortnite, Counter-Strike and more.
He also starred in the Canadian version of reality TV show ‘The Traitors,’ and hopes to land more spots in both scripted and unscripted television series in the future. As a content creator on the rise, he firmly believes that hard work and dedication is the recipe for success — something he echoed in a statement to other up-and-comers looking to make a name for themselves.
“Be true to yourself,” he advised. “Don’t put on a charade, a character of who you want to be online, ’cause you can’t always keep that up. Be yourself. So if someone runs into you, even on a bad day, you’re yourself.
“Stick to it. Don’t let the hate get to you. Don’t let all the bad negativity get to you, because at the end of the day, no one else can stop you from achieving what you want. The only challenge between achieving it is you, yourself.”
