True friendships in gaming

DW (English)

Mats Steen was a Norwegian gamer who lived with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Before his death, he crafted a whole fantastical persona in World of Warcraft, building close friendships under his avatar, Ibelin.

Transcript

00:00This is Mats Steen. In the last 10 years of his life he was an avid player of

00:05World of Warcraft, his favorite game. In 2014 at the age of 25 Mats died of a

00:13degenerative muscular disease. For most of his physical life he used a wheelchair.

00:18When entering the virtual world of Azeroth he lived as Eberlin, forging

00:23friendships along the way. Mats changed lives and he changed those lives without

00:32meeting these people. They all communicated in text form. They had never

00:36seen Mats and for a long time they did not know that Mats was sick. So he just

00:42communicated through his avatar with his fingers. Mats's parents only learned of

00:48his other life when they updated his blog, informing followers of his passing.

00:53Suddenly his parents began receiving emails from all over Europe telling

00:57totally different stories about their son, telling stories about their best

01:01friend, that Mats had changed their lives fundamentally and they even wanted to

01:07come to his funeral. Director Benjamin recaptured Mats Steen's story in a

01:13documentary. He wanted to show how valuable online friendships can be

01:17because for Mats's friends their connection was completely real, even if

01:22they never met in person.

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