Hey,
I’m Pavle. I run Play&Forge.
Background Check
Video games have been part of my world since I was a wee lad. They’ve been with me through it all, in my darkest moments and in my happiest moments. I was what you would call a hardcore gamer. There were points in my life where I would spend 12+ hours daily playing video games. Not the healthiest life choice or something that I like to brag about but I still have no regrets about it. As I’ve gotten older, I learned how to manage my time more wisely and have more positive/healthy relationships with video games.
In my long gaming career, I’ve played all sorts of games. It started with Sega Mega, I played almost all of the games that were available for it. The next big step-up was when I was introduced to a wonderful piece of technology known as Playstation via CTR aka Crash Team Racing. It was a rented one with limited games and time but boy, did it change my perspective on what games are capable of.
A few years later I’ve managed to convince people in charge of me aka parents that as a straight A’s student I’ll need a PC in order to continue to be a good student. Which was an absolute lie but hey, I kept my part of the deal till the end of my school years. Anyways, that PC started what one might describe as an epic journey.
My first game on it was Spider-Man 2, I remember I was freaking out over how good it looks and soon after getting annoyed when I struggled with Rhino’s Rampage. Shortly after I moved on to Prince of Persia and then to Half-Life 2 which naturally led to Counter-Strike 1.6. The game that not only took over my life but also the lives of everyone I knew. A couple of years later, I stumbled upon a PWI, an MMORPG that would become a huge part of my life.
As you can see, I was introduced to video games at a young age and it was a love at first sight. Since then I’ve played all genres of games like FPS, Racers, MMORPG, Indie, RPG, JRPG, Gacha, Strategy, Battle Royale, Fighters, Simulators. I tried everything except for horror games and you won’t ever see me play that genre. Not as long as I live and breathe. I don’t care how good they are. Life is too short.
Why I Started Play&Forge
My whole life I struggled with many things but my biggest struggle was finding a place where I belong, a sense of purpose. Like many of you, I too wondered why I was here on Earth and what the hell am I supposed to do with myself.
I strongly believed that I was supposed to be a Mechanical Engineer, which I dedicated a good portion of my life to. I’ve gained extensive knowledge on it, I’ve become very proficient in using machines like metal lathe and a milling machine. I’ve even received an offer that would guarantee my job security for the rest of my life. Unfortunately for me, I’m not wired like that. I realised I didn’t want to do it, so I didn’t…
Soon after that, I’ve made a decision to become a Front-end Developer. I’ve started obsessively learning about it, doing a bunch of courses for it, making demo websites and in a short period of time I’ve landed a job in a “promising startup”. Which didn’t pay but I was happy to be part of the team and gain more experience.
But as a functioning grownup, you can’t do that for too long. I’ve heard great advice from someone that I could just pitch to local businesses to make or fix their website and earn money that way. Which I did and earned my first real money from that. I even got on the radar of a huge construction mogul that wanted to create a professional website for his blooming business. He even offered really good money for it. Unfortunately I wasn’t equipped/prepared for that sort of project.
In all of that, I’ve realised that I need to market myself more and better. In the process of doing so, I learned a lot about digital marketing. So much so that I even got a job offer as a PPC Specialist. And that turned out to be a soulless grind where I had to run a bunch of company accounts. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at it but it wasn’t for me.
Around that time I had an existential crisis and had a long chat with myself about what would really make me fulfilled. I had a general idea that it had to do something with gaming. Naturally I gravitated towards a blog.
And for the first time in my life I was genuinely feeling better, I would even dare say I was happier. I was doing something that I found interesting and something that was part of my whole life and what’s even better, it was working out.
In the midst of it all, for some stupid reason only known to me, I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to continue the good progress I was making I needed to compete against big gaming conglomerates. And in full honesty, that was never a goal, so I don’t know why I did that. During that period I did make tons of content but nothing that I would proudly call mine.
But I’m more than grateful for that because it made me realise 2 BIG things. First, I need to be me and do things my way, not like some company with 10 kabillion employees. Secondly, I want to build a positive community where we help each other, encourage each other, share tips, play together, share good games, help out small indie developers and potentially do a lot of game giveaways.
So, what I’m trying to say is that this is who I am and this is where I belong. And I’m hoping that you would join me in making a community that’s known for how helpful, positive and generous it is. I think we can agree that the world has more than enough bad/mean/negative places and it definitely doesn’t need another.
I truly believe that we can make the gaming world a better place to be a part of.
What I use to play games
PC
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
GPU: Nvidia RTX 5080
SSD: Kingston SNV3S2000G 2TB
RAM: Kingston KF556C36-32 1x31GB
MBD: Gigabyte GA-B650 EAGLE AX
Monitor
Alienware 240Hz Gaming Monitor 24.5 Inch Full HD with IPS Technology – AW2521HF
SteamDeck
512GB OLED
1280 x 800 HDR OLED display
7.4″ Diagonal display size
up to 90Hz refresh rate
Wi-Fi 6E
50Whr battery;
45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
PS5
Sony PlayStation 5 Slim 1TB
Laptop
ASUS VivoBook Go 14/15 – | Ryzen 5 | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD
Phone
Samsung S23 Ultra 256GB
Tablet
Samsung Tablet S6 Lite 4 GB/64 GB