'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin' documentary reconstructs rich online world of a terminally ill gamer

Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcasted on Jan. 8, 2025. Find that audio here. 

Mats Steen had a rare disease that wasted his muscles until he could barely move his fingers. His family thought his illness would prevent him from developing friendships. But after his death, his family discovered a rich online community that supported him through the game "World of Warcraft." A new Netflix documentary interweaves Steen's offline struggles with animated reconstructions of his time online.

We discuss Steen's legacy in "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" with filmmaker Benjamin Ree.

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In the game “World of Warcraft,” Mats kept his condition secret from the other players for so many years. Who was he offline and who was he online?

“Mats was a very charismatic person. He was very intelligent, funny. He was a great listener. He was a great friend. At the same time, he made a lot of mistakes. He could be very angry. He would be lying. He would lash out towards his friends.

“The film shows eight years of his life spent in ‘World of Warcraft.’ We had like 42,000 pages of gaming dialogue that was stored. That was reduced down to 4,000 pages. And that is what we were used to to make the animation on the film.”

How did you take this raw material from his blog, all the digital text and communication, and try to re-enact his life in key moments in the game? 

“We would do in-depth interviews with his friends. And then we would begin to animate. So we took models directly from the internet — and this was all done independently of the company that owns the game, Activision Blizzard. We actually made the film without asking for permission from the company after three years. Then when we had finished the film we asked, ‘Can we use your rights for free without any involvement from you guys?’ And they saw the film, and then they said yes.

“Then we would do a first draft of animation, and then we would send that to Mats’ friends, you know, and then they would give feedback like ‘my character wouldn't laugh that much. You should tone that down.’ Or ‘give my avatar a bit more brown color in her eyes.’ So when I showed Mats’ friends, the whole guild, the film for the first time, the response we got was, ‘This is exactly how we remember Ibelin.’ And that's a great compliment.

“But they said, ‘You made one mistake, Benjamin.’ And I was very nervous because, you know, making a mistake like that, you know, can mean two more years of work. And they said, ‘Ibelin liked women with more leather clothes.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you know, the women had more leather on them.’ And they showed me what kind of leather even. We went into the animation again and changed the clothes on some of the women.”

Mats was also complicated, like all humans are complicated. He developed a reputation as a womanizer. He yearned for these deep connections that he could not get in real life. He has this romantic relationship inside the game, and he writes in his blog, “This is the first time I understood love.” Was it remarkable to you just reading his blog?

“Yes, I think when I began this project, I had so many questions like, is it possible to fall in love with somebody you've never met? Is it possible to be close friends with somebody you never met? And I had never played ‘World of Warcraft’ myself. I'm not a gamer, so I had a deep curiosity to explore this, and I needed to also have a team of animators around me that had played that game a lot.

“So I think that through those over four years it took to make this film, I also learned a lot. You know, I learned a lot about him. He experienced love and friendships and making an impact. He also experienced losing his best friends, losing contact with them because he was behaving badly. I also hope this film shows negative sides about gaming because he could hide who he really was. And then he asked for forgiveness. But it has some very positive sides, but also some negative.”

In my case, there’s somebody very close to my family who I worry about because this person spends 10 hours in front of a screen playing a game. To me, this person's life is just kind of wasting away. What do you discover about what this world can be that you want us to discover? 

“In the film, we meet Ibelin’s love interest, Lisette. Her Avatar is called a Rumour. Her computer was taken away from her. So she just disappeared from the game and she got very depressed because of it, to the point that she didn't get out of bed in the morning. And it shows how deep connections online can be.

“I think what I've learned is that it's good to engage more, you know, ask questions, be interested. And that's what Mats’ parents also say. But the film also says something about human kindness. When I began this project, I had a little bit of a prejudice because I thought that Mats could help his friends because he didn't work. He had time for them. If there was one person that did not have much time or energy it was Mats.

“He had a breathing machine. He had so many pains. He had so little of the energy that I am fortunate to have in my life. He used that little energy to be there for his friends, and that is something I haven't been good at in my own life. And if there's something I take away from working on this project for over four years it's asking the question, ‘How are you doing?’ And prioritize the list and really meaning it and then have time for your friends.”

James Perkins Mastromarino produced and edited this segment for broadcast with Mark Navin. Perkins Mastromarino also adapted it for the web.