This is not a regular missions update, but something I wanted to share and keep in a more accessible (and more easily readable) place. It’s a Norwegian article about a gamer and his gaming community (guild) in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called World of Warcraft.
As a guild master myself and regular player of an MMORPG called Guild Wars 2, I often find it difficult to share why this game is so engaging and important to people who don’t game regularly. I think this article does a really good job of trying to explain the positive community aspects of gaming and that the depth of these online friendships can be as deep as those that we have with real-life friends, even if you’ve only met up in a virtual world.
The original Norwegian article can be found here, and its English translation (by /u/nihwtf, /u/Outcomac, and /u/Seranta) was taken from a reddit comment.
Only when Mats died, did his parents understand the value of his game
Robert and Trude mourned for their son’s lonely life in wheelchair. But when Mats died, friends all over Europe lit up candles for him.
by Vicky Schaubert—Journalist; Patrick da Silva Sæther—Photographer; Andre Håker—Graphics; Lene Sæter—Graphics
“We were very traditional. So we didn’t want him to spend all night playing video games,” says Robert Steen (56).
It’s August the 23, 2018. Robert sits at a coffee shop, a stone’s throw away from his office at Oslo City Hall and shares the story of his son. It’s painful, but also comforting in a way.
“In retrospect, I think we should have been more interested in the digital world he spent so much time in. The fact that we did not, robbed us of a possibility we did not understand we had,” says Robert
Robert and the unknown friends
Hardly four years earlier, Robert was standing by his son’s stretcher in Vestre gravlund’s New Chapel and held the eulogy for Mats.
Among those sitting on the chapel’s blue chairs and listening to Robert’s words – between family members and a few people from the health service who knew Mats well – were people the family didn’t know. Only Robert had met them. Once, the night before.
Considering Mats had barely left the flat in his parents house the last years of his life, it was puzzling how strangers showed up for his funeral. More puzzling was it to know Mats hadn’t even met these people himself.
In fact, these mourners did not think of him as Mats. They thought of him as Ibelin; nobleman of a great bloodline, seducer and detective. They had come from afar, some from near, and they were crying for their good friend whom they had lost.
Later in the eulogy, one of these strangers would speak and share, that now, in this moment, people throughout Europe would light candles for Mats and be reminded of him in grief and in love.
Mats’ measured time
It was written in the stars, it was coded in his DNA: that Mats who, in July 1993, strolled around with his crown on his head during his own four-year old birthday, should within four years sink into the hated wheelchair and never stand up again.
Robert and Trude received the message already in May, two months before Mats turned four. At a small office in Ullevål Hospital’s large brick building, they had been told why their boy fell constantly and got hurt. Fell off the swing. Why he did not climb the ladder in the kindergarten, even though he loved sliding down again. Supported his knees as an old man as he rose from sitting. Didn’t race the other kids.
The doctors told Robert and Trude that Mats had Duchennes muscular dystrophy; a rare disease that causes muscle to waste away in boys. In Mats’ genes there was an error code that would prevent his muscles from developing normally. It would eventually destroy them.
“After Mats was put to sleep that night, we called the doctor,” says Robert. “We were allowed to do so. Call anytime – if we needed more information.”
Trude sat next to him on the couch. Half an hour into the phone call, Robert says he managed to find a small bright spot:
I said, “But at least he doesn’t die from this!” The doctor at the other end of the line went silent for a moment. Then I heard him say, “No, but the experience is that these patients rarely get older than twenty.”
Robert pauses. Then says, “He ended up twenty five, at least.”
The May evening in 1993, in the townhouse in the district of Østensjø, southeast of Oslo – when the future went from vague promises of something good, to becoming a threat – Robert and Trude tried to understand what the doctor’s words meant. Mats would not live a normal life. Couldn’t do sports. Couldn’t go out and meet girls. Couldn’t experience the world or contribute to society. He would die young, without getting to live a full life. This was what Robert and Trude believed as long as Mats lived: that he would be taken from them without leaving his mark on the world.
They were so very wrong.
Creating oneself in zeroes and ones
If the DNA in us draws up the map for who we are, even before we are born, what opportunity do we have to choose who we want to be?
Mats found a way and created himself again.
Around the turn of the millennium, the Steen family had moved from the townhouse in Østensjø to a wheelchair-adapted home at Langhus in Akershus. Although the school allowed eleven-year-old Mats to play Gameboy during breaks, even Super Mario couldn’t chase away the feelings of loneliness. Of being different. Mats sat in a wheelchair, and had an assistant with him everywhere.
The parents pondered what he could do in his spare time, while the classmates played football and ran around.
PC games might be something to consider for Mats? Robert gave him the password for the family PC, and suddenly a new world opened up for the eleven-year-old.
“During the last ten years of his life, Mats played between 15 and 20,000 hours,” Robert said in his speech. “That’s more than in a full-time job for over a decade.”
But even this solution was not completely conflict-free. Robert tells, “When the night watchman arrived at 22:00 in the evening, Mats had to be in bed. The night watchman’s job description was to watch over Mats, not put him in bed. Mats protested, of course, but reluctantly went to bed early.”
Mats had become a gamer, and gamers didn’t go to bed at ten.
So who exactly was Mats during all the hours he spent online?
As for Lord Ibelin Redmoore, Mats main character, and Jerome Walker, his second character, Mats wrote, “Jerome and Ibelin are extensions of my self, they represent different sides of me.” Through Ibelin and Jerome, Mats would play an important role also in other people’s lives.
Mats played many types of PC-games, but eventually he ended up in Azeroth – a planet in the game World of Warcraft. A fantasy world with continents and lands, seas and forests. There are mountains, lakes and ponds. Cliffs, plains, villages and towns. Mats spent most of his hours in Eastern Kingdoms.
As an online player, you learn bit by bit to know this world as well as you know the physical world. There will be places you plan to go to, landscapes and cities you learn to master – some better than others – areas you watch out for, neighbourhoods you spend more time in. Your local pub where you meet friends.
Such is the world. Such is Azeroth.
There, Mats found his clique. A wide circle of good friends. But for outsiders, it’s hard to tell what’s so special about Azeroth.
What you see and what you think you see
Robert Steen talks about his son, a late Friday sometime in November. At his office in Oslo City Hall, Robert talks about what he saw:
“When I walked past Mats’ apartment during the day, and saw that the curtains were down, like usual… I remember the feeling of hopelessness. —Sigh, he hasn’t even started the day yet.”
“I was sad because the world he was living in was so limited,” says Robert.
But a person that has no interest in gaming themselves, rarely gets the full picture.
“We thought everything was just about the game in the game world. And that was it. We thought it was a competition to win, your typical arcade-type game,” says Robert.
And then of course there was the effect the game had on their sons circadian rhythm:
“We didn’t understand how important it was for him to be online so late in the evening and throughout the night. But as it turns out, most people play games during the evening or late at night. Mornings and midday is where most people are at school or work, says Robert. We didn’t really understand it until he had passed away. To the very last moment, we wanted him to go to sleep at 23:00, like other “normal” people.”
A theft in Goldshire
Lisette Roovers (28) from the city of Breda, in the south of the Netherlands, was one of Mats’ closest in-game friends. She was also one of those who participated in the eulogy. She’s in Norway visiting Kai Simon Fredriksen (40), who also played with Mats.
In Kai Simon’s sofa at Høybråten, northeast of Oslo, Lisette says, “I knew Mats for many years. It was a shock for me when he died and the event changed me as a person.”
Lisette was only fifteen years old when she met Mats, who was a year older. Or, to be precise: Lisette’s game character Rumor met Mats’ game character Ibelin.
Lisette shares the story of how the two met.
“We met in Goldshire. Right now, Goldshire does not have a good reputation, but at that time, Goldshire was a quaint small hub where you could encounter interesting people.
“I was looking for someone to play with and saw some people gathered around a bonfire, one of them Mats, the person I would learn to know as Ibelin. I – or Rumor, then – acted a little on impulse; jumped out of the bushes and snatched Ibelin’s hat. Staying silent for a moment, we looked at each other. Then I ran away with his hat, without a thought for where I was headed,” says Lisette and smiles.
Mats shared this moment on his blog, in a post called ‘Love’.
“In this world, this girl does not see a wheelchair or anything else. What she sees is my soul, my heart, my personality, conveniently placed in a handsome, strong body. Fortunately, in the virtual world, every single character looks good.”
“Mats was a good friend – at times a very close friend, says Lisette. We wrote about everything, but he didn’t share the fact that he was sick with me or anyone else. I thought his life was the same as mine. For example, we both agreed that we hated school.”
As for something Mats and Lissette disagreed on, snow.
“He told me that he absolutely hated snow. I told him I loved snow, I didn’t understand at the time that he hated snow because he was in a wheelchair. He hadn’t said anything about his illness, so I didn’t know about the wheelchair.”
Out on the town – or into Elwynn Forest
Lisette enjoyed the time spent inside of the digital world, and describes a typical evening:
“My sister went out with friends, I stayed home and gamed.”
But the hours Lisette’s spent on the game made her parents uneasy.
The game took over her life. At the expense of school work and friends, they say. We were worried. Gaming became a source of conflict, and the parents’ solution was to limit Lisette’s ability to spend time playing.
“Not getting to play and not being able to contact my friends was hard for me,” says Lisette.
But Mats did not fail their friendship, even though he didn’t find her in game. He kept in touch with Lisette through emails and messages, showed her she was not alone and that she was sorely missed.
“He even wrote a serious letter to my parents, trying to make them understand how important it was for me to play,” Lisette says. “He wrote that he was worried about me. I’ve kept that letter,” she adds.
Real friends – and those who are not Dad
Robert tells that they knew Mats wrote with someone named Lisette:
“Mats talked a lot about these game characters – these avatars – but we didn’t put much thought in it. He talked a lot about this Rumour,” says Robert. “She, or Lisette, also sent packages to him, including for his birthday. We thought it was touching, and we teased him a little. He blushed, for real,” Robert says.
“So Lisette we thought of as a friend, because of those packages. They were tangible proof of true friendship, one could say.” He adds, “The others he had contact with, we didn’t call friends. We called them avatars.” Robert stops and thinks. “Our view of friendship was very traditional. Those who were just there digitally, we didn’t think of as friends.”
Finding their clique
In World of Warcraft you can either play alone or you can team up with other players and form a guild. Mats was part of such a guild: Starlight. This guild has around 30 members.
“It takes effort to become a member of Starlight, they don’t just accept everyone,” says Robert. “To become a member you must be recommended by one who is a member. After that you’re a trial for about a month or two.”
Starlight has been around for more than twelve years and is still an active guild. Twelve years is a long time for such a group. About as long as half of Mats’ life.
Robert has understood that Starlight stands out in the gaming world. “The guild is special because it has been around for so long. That’s probably one of the reasons why the friendships in Starlight run so deep.”
Kai Simon Fredriksen (40), or Nomine, as he is called ingame, leads Starlight. Around the day of death to Mats, Starlight always arranges a memorial for Ibelin, where the members of the guild remember their friend. They did this on the first Sunday after Mats died in 2014, and they have done so every year. Before last year’s memorial, Kai Simon described the scheme as follows:
“We will remember Lord Ibelin Redmoore together and our focus will be running and swimming. Ibelin was a runner,” Kai Simon explains. “So, one that ran, literally. It was important for him to run, and it was important for him to be able to share the experience of running with others.”
Is Kai Simon talking about Mats or Ibelin Redmoore? Maybe it’s not important. Maybe that’s how it was: The man and the character became one and the same.
With the wheelchair in to Azeroth
In the summer of 2013, Mats was 24 years old. He had already lived four years longer than the doctors had suggested. The Steen family was on a summer holiday in Mallorca, Mats was stuck in the apartment at Langhus.
This summer Mats started his blog: Musings of life – thoughts about life. In the blog post he called My escape, Mats writes about life in Azeroth:
“In there, my handicap doesn’t matter. My chains are broken and I can choose who I want to be. Inside the game, I feel normal.”
Mats shared his blog with the members of the guild – one by one – and so they got to know how the situation was for Mats. Lisette tells about her reaction when she read the blog:
“I was shocked… And I felt guilty of occasionally teasing him in the game and not always being so caring.” I then thought, “Do I have to start treating him differently now? I decided on treating him as I always had, he was still the same person. He also wrote in his blog that he still wanted to be treated the same way,” says Lisette.
A free territory
In Starlight she is Chit, a rough and down-to-earth character. Otherwise in her life she is Anne Hamill (65) from Salisbury, England, retired psychologist and enthusiastic gamer.
Anne thinks it’s fascinating how the Starlight community works for those who often fall out in the “real world.”
“In the roleplaying game we meet each other without prejudice. Therefore, Starlight is perceived as safe, also for those who experience themselves as “different.” Online games are a fantastic arena for meeting people and building friendships,” says Anne.
“It gives you the opportunity to discover the other’s qualities, without the stereotypes of the physical world standing in the way. Only when we have become well-known, we share such things as age, gender, any handicap and life situation – if it feels right,” Anne says.
And adds, “I think Mats was lucky that belonged to our time, technologically. Had he been born 15 years earlier, he would not have found such a community as Starlight.”
A bleak premonition
About half a year before he died, Mats was away from World of Warcraft for ten days. His fellow players wondered where he was.
“Ten days was a very long period of being logged off. Mats was always there when you wanted to play, or needed someone to chat with,” says Anne.
When he was back in the game, they were told that he had been hospitalised. Anne says she finally decided to say what she had on her mind.
“I wrote to him: ‘Dear Mats. You have to give someone an opportunity to get in touch with us if something happens to you. So we’ll know, even if you can’t let us know,’ ” says Anne.
What she asked him was, in effect, that he should give his password to someone, or at least lay a plan for how Starlight would be notified, if something serious happened to him.
She wrote, “You’re important to us.”
Mats wrote back, “You’re just saying that because you’ve been told I’m in a wheelchair.”
“I replied, ‘No, Mats. You are important to the guild. You are a wonderful listener. You are one who lifts us and Starlight.’ ” Mats waited a bit to answer.
“But I realised at that time that he took in what I said,” says Anne.
Then there was only half a year left of his life.
November 18, 2014, Mats dies abruptly.
He had been hospitalised in the hospital, and the family had feared the worst. But the doctors thought they had averted the danger and had said he could soon go home.
“We were rushed to Ahus (local hospital). He was on the fourth floor, very deep in a corridor. The seconds were so precious. The corridor was so long.”
They didn’t reach it. Robert says they were late. The high carbon dioxide concentration in the blood became fatal.
The picture Robert took from his son on the deathbed shows a pale young man, with dark, wavy hair. He has nicely drawn eyes, a noble nose and a mouth marked by the breathing mask he had been wearing for a long time. He looks like he’s sleeping.
Many years ago, Lisette drew this drawing:
Ibelin holds around Rumor, a scarf hides his nose and mouth.
“It came in the mail,” says Robert. “Now it hangs on the wall at home.”
A sudden liberating thought
The day after Mats died, Robert sat in their house at Langhus, in the middle of what he referred to as a mini-chaos.
“It’s like it usually is in a home where someone has recently passed away: The doorbell rang, we got flowers, neighbours came to visit. We cried.”
In the middle of all of it, Robert also thought hard about who else had to be told about what had happened. He thought of the people Mats had played with, and wondered how in the world he could reach them.
“Before Mats died, I never thought I would need his password.” But now he needed it. “That was when I remembered the blog,” says Robert.
Mats had given his dad the password for his blog, so Robert could check the statistics continuously and view of how many clicks, views and other stats to that needed to be kept track of.
Anne Hamill, also known as Chit, has clear advice to all parents:
“You don’t know who plays a role in your children’s lives, unless you know their digital friends. Be sure to make arrangements with your kids about how to reach their friends online, in case something happens. Otherwise, there may be many who walk in uncertainty, if something happens and their friend never logs back on.”
At the end of the journey
It’s Friday night in Oslo City Hall. The politicians and the others have said good evening, good weekend and gone home, the city’s lights shining like stars on a night-black sky outside the windows of Robert Steen’s office.
Robert wrote the blog post announcing Mats’ death on his couch at home, the day after the death of his son.
This post, the latest on the blog, is titled “The journey has come to an end”. The text tells of Mats’ life, and Robert finished it like this: “The family can be contacted at this email address: […]”
“I sat there on the couch and cried as I wrote. And then I pressed send. I didn’t know if anyone would care, let alone reply.”
Robert breathes, then continues, “A couple of hours go by before the first mail comes back – a heartfelt condolence from one of the players in Starlight. I read the mail aloud. It made such an impression on me.”
From the condolence emails: “It is with heavy heart I write this post for a man I never met, but knew so well.”
Robert continues, “That we had found a way to interact with Mats’ friends, and that they responded in that way. It was … He transcended his physical boundaries and enriched the lives of people all over the world.”
Robert elaborates, “I wanted to say first of all that Mats had passed away. And then these stories began to come in.”
“Mats’ passing has hit me very hard. I can’t believe how much I’ll miss him.”
Robert’s voice is choked up as he talks about the events that transpired.
“Suddenly a small society had been built up, a very small group of people, from a dimension we had no idea about. There were more and more emails throughout the day, and for several days later – a testimony to how important Mats was to these people.”
“I don’t believe that one single person is the heart of Starlight. But if one was, it would have been him.”
Robert says that a new physical reality had now entered the digital one.
How do you measure friendship?
When Mats’ guild, Starlight, learned that he had died, members of the group pooled their money together in a common pot so that those who could not afford to, still had the opportunity to travel to Oslo and participate in the ceremony.
Robert says that the family learned that money was collected by members in the guild.
“It was very moving. We were crying and crying, just an intense emotional joy over seeing the life Mats had actually lived. With real friends, girlfriends, people who cared so much that they would fly from another country to be part of the funeral of someone they never met. It was also very emotional,” says Robert.
Lisette came from the Netherlands, Anne from England, Janina from Finland, Gitte from Denmark, Kai Simon from Høybråten.
The night before, Robert had dinner with the guild-mates and learned more about the person Mats had been in the digital community.
“In the days after he died, and at this dinner the night before the banquet, a new door opened for me,” says Robert.
Anne says that the guild-mates learned that a small movie would be shown of Mats during the ceremony.
“We discussed whether it was right for us to watch this movie, as Mats had always kept his physical figure hidden from us. But we went, and we saw him as he was in reality. It made no difference to us, but it made an impression.”
The funeral started at 14:30 on November 28, 2014, in the Vestre Gravlund Nye Kapell. In the speech, on behalf of the members of Starlight, Kai Simon Fredriksen, also known as the guild master Nomine, said:
“While we are gathered here today, lights are lit for Mats in a classroom in the Netherlands. In a call center in Ireland burns a candle, in a library in Sweden a light is lit. He remembers a small hairdressing salon in Finland, a municipal office in Denmark, and many places in England.
“Throughout Europe, Mats is remembered, by many more than those who had the opportunity to come here today.
“I met Mats in a world where it doesn’t matter who you are, what kind of body you have or how you look in reality, behind the keyboard. What matters is who you choose to be, how you behave towards others. What matters is what is here” —he puts a hand against his temple—”and here.” Kai Simon then puts his hand on his heart.
When the coffin was to be carried out of the chapel, Lisette was one of the six who carried. It was the first time she was physically close to him.
“I tried not to think about how little it weighed. In my life I had seen Mats through the form of Ibelin Redmoore, a great, strong character. In the coffin lay a person who weighed almost nothing.”
“Mats’ legacy will be the imprint he left behind on all of us who got to know him. He touched so many,” says Lisette.
To be – someone
What does it mean to be human in this world – and how do you become the person you want to be?
In his blog, Mats wrote about the computer screen he was in front of for over half the time he was here on Earth:
“It’s not a screen, it’s a gateway to where your heart desires.”
