Oslo-based parents Trude and Robert Steen were elated when they started receiving hundreds of condolence emails from people they’d never heard of before, who’d met their son Mats Steen on World of Warcraft
Parents heartbroken over the death of their severely disabled son were overjoyed when they discovered the secret life he’d been leading online.
Mats Steen, from Norway, was confined to his home due to a debilitating muscular disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, with his parents led to believe the condition had forced him to live a life of loneliness. However, after his death, the family discovered that he was a popular and well-liked member of a heaving community and lived a life of adventure.
His parents, and sister Mia, discovered he had a wonderful social life through his online blog and from the online roleplaying game, World of Warcraft. Not long after his death, the family started receiving hundreds of emails from people they’d never heard of. The senders all appeared to know their son very well.
The family eventually learned that Mats had forged strong friendships and even romance in the community after announcing his death on his online blog. They were expecting a handful of replies but were elated when hundreds of people got in touch with their condolences.
One thing that surprised the family was the name they called their son. His pals knew him by a totally different name, Ibelin Redmoore, which was his handle on the World of Warcraft platform. While in his everyday life, Mats’ condition made it difficult for him to breathe and move, online he was a heroic monster slayer loved by his fellow players. The people he forged meaningful friendships with said he was best known for his kindness and empathy.
His parents Robert and Trude revealed how they had initially tried to stop their son from spending so much time online. They had urged him to look to the offline world to foster connection, but had now realised how wrong they were.
Robert told The Independent.: “We thought he lived, for many reasons, a wasted life. And then we get these stories sharing just the opposite. The sad thing is that we were very strong on condemning the time they were spending in that world, and that condemnation was based on a five-minute analysis.”
Robert added that he felt they were good parents and had been present in the lives of their children, but admitted that their digital lives was the “one exception”. The incredible story is being explored in a new documentary – The Remarkable Life of Ibelin – which is set to hit Netflix on Friday. The filmmakers present online gaming as a way of providing a vital place for people with severe disabilites to find friendship and romance.
“In Scandinavia, at least, we feel that we are becoming more and more fragmented. Everybody’s looking after themselves and their own causes; we have become extremely individualistic, centred on our own things,” Robert said. “These collective solutions that we had some generations ago are gone, in a way. So if this could be one of the messages from this story – the kindness we can bring to a community, to the world – that would be great
“Mats, in his condition, could help so many people without being able to move more than just his fingers. Imagine what the rest of us could do if we put our minds to it.”
