The Remarkable Life of Ibelin director Benjamin Ree on the power of video games and friendship

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a documentary that focuses on Mats Steen, a man from Norway who used gaming to overcome the restrictions of a muscular disease called Duchenne. Mats lived to the age of 25 and the film charts his short life using family home videos and animation to convey Mats’ experiences.

In the film, we get a candid and personal look at Mats’ funeral. Mats’ father spoke words reflecting on how they once thought that their child would never feel true friendship or love, unaware of how many people loved him. Mats left his mark on the world and on countless others.

Mats’ did this through a video game called World of Warcraft. A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, he used this outlet as a form of escape and created a persona called Ibelin, who joined a community and got to live a life unconstrained from his wheelchair, breathing apparatus, and the stigma of disability.

Through Ibelin, Mats made friends. A lot of friends. He helped them connect with each other, he talked through their problems, he listened when they had nobody to talk to. These were people who never got to meet him in real life but who loved him unconditionally, and they travelled across the world, to his funeral, paying their respects to someone who loved, and loved hard. Mats found his place in the world, where he wasn’t judged but adored, and this came to him through video games.

The spark of love

I got the chance to sit down and talk to the film’s director, Benjamin Ree, who explained how he came about Mats’ story and how he decided he wanted to tell it, “I knew Mats’ uncle. He was my teacher at school, and he taught me filmmaking. We made all these amateur films from when I was 11. Every year since 2014, when Mats passed away, his uncle would write about him on Facebook. He was very close to Mats - he was actually Mats’ first assistant.”

Mats required a lot of round the clock care, and as his condition worsened, he embraced the people around him to lend him both support and care. In 2019, Mats’ uncle went on to write more than a Facebook post and published an article about his nephew, which was picked up by news outlets around the world. It was this article that made a “huge impression” on the director.

Mats Steen, Netflix

“[The article] asked some very interesting questions about friendships” says Ree, who thought there might be more to explore. However, he wasn’t sure how the story would translate to a visual medium, and it was then he discovered something that would soon spiral into this project.

“I called up his uncle just to tell him how much the story meant to me. That was when he told me that his brother, Mats’ father, had filmed Mats’ whole life.” Because Ree knew that World of Warcraft had helped Mats explore the world of love and friendship, he wondered if there was more data that could help tell Mats’ story visually. It was here he discovered that as part of the role-playing group on World of Warcraft, they had kept an archive of everything each player said and did in the game. Ree goes on to say, “That was the moment when I thought, oh, maybe it's possible.”

Bringing the online connection to a wider audience

To bring Mats’ story to a broad audience, Benjamin Ree decided that making a documentary was the way to go, and he already had a lot of footage to work through. Of course, the inevitable problem arose of how to make an audience connect with this story, especially when this video game could be a complete unknown to many of them.

“I knew that the first 25 minutes would work well because it is made up of family home videos. It's interviews, and it's Mats’ blog, all told through a visual essay.” However, when it came to telling the bulk of the story - how Mats met so many people online through a video game - how could that be conveyed?

Mats played as a character called Ibelin. He had a routine of logging on and running through the world, always following a particular route, stopping to talk to people along the way. His interactions, big and small, made up the core of these friendships - they are often the spark - and that was going to be tough to put on screen.

Netflix

“The most important part was to make the audience want to go into this virtual world” Ree explained. “They were already invested in Mats’ real life [from the opening third], I wanted them to be as much invested in Ibelin. That was the most important and the most difficult part, because the film changes the contract. Suddenly it goes from the documentary, quickly becoming a virtual representation of the game.”

The only way to tell Ibelin’s story was to use animation, but it couldn’t be an artist’s interpretation, it had to reflect World of Warcraft, and so Ree sought out animators who could help bring Ibelin, his friends, and the world of Azeroth to life. Ree had never played the game before this but he knew how big it was in scope and he needed a team of animators who knew the world well.

Where better to find talent?

It turns out, the best place to find great animators is YouTube. Ree found teams of people who were already dabbling in telling stories using the 3D models, locales, and designs from the game. He ended up bringing in a team from Stockholm who not only knew the game inside out, but they were terrific animators. As Benjamin explains, “All the animation was done by YouTubers. This is their first job. They were making these YouTube videos in their spare time, they were working other places as well. They had jobs during the day.”

The team was quickly assembled and work began. You might wonder where Blizzard, the developers and publishers of the game, came in. Well, they didn’t. “We actually made the film without asking for permission from Blizzard” explains Ree, “We just made it and took their world, and then when we had almost finished the film, we contacted them and asked for permission. It was a risk. I like to say that we did it the Norwegian way.”

He jokes that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission in these moments. This was a huge risk, but it ultimately paid off and Blizzard jumped on board the project. Yet Ree and his team didn’t really need much from the game’s developer, the film was almost finished, after all. “It was important for us to keep our independence, but it was also important for us to have the aesthetics from the game. Ibelin needed to look like Ibelin.” So, Blizzard stepped in to help by delivering items that Mats’ character Ibelin carried, many of which are years old by this point.

Netflix

When asked what else Blizzard contributed to the project, Ree says, “They were really just signing off on it. They had no comments on the film at that point. They only really helped us level up the character in the game.”

Because Ibelin had been on many missions and visited distant parts of the game world, the crew had to get hold of items and get into areas that usually came after hundreds of hours of playing. Blizzard stepped in to make that process a lot simpler, though the production team still had just one person sitting at a computer playing the game to capture footage. “We had to play the character for a year to level up to get that gear. My director’s assistant already played World of Warcraft, so he was playing a lot” explains Ree.

The importance of friendship

Over many months, the footage began to come together. The production team had archives of everything Ibelin had said to other players, what in-game emotes they used when speaking, which areas of Azeroth they hung out in. During Mats’ time playing World of Warcraft, he made a huge number of friends, and it’s these friendships that build up the core of the film. Ree and his team wanted to capture the essence of Mats and his friends.

If you’ve seen the film, you’ll be aware that Mats helped a lot of people. There are touching anecdotes told through interviews with his friends that are transposed with animation playing out what happened originally. We see Ibelin talking to people to build their confidence, to help them through problems with their family, even in how to make new friends or express love. These were all things that Mats’ parents thought he would never experience due to his life and living with Duchenne.

The documentary had to show how this simple video game sparked not only friendships, but a sense of family and the love each of these guild members felt for one another. Ree and his crew talked for hours with Mats’ friends to ensure they captured their in-game characters correctly. A role-playing server, which is where Mats created Ibelin, is one where many players rarely break character. They take character creation very seriously because each character is an extension of the player.

Netflix

The crew had to get everything right. They wanted each character's skin tone to be correct, to get the clothing just right. Ree even tells of working hard to capture the way one person would laugh, because to these players, every interaction is genuine and built from in-game interactions that are fleshed out in the mind. All of Mats’ friends were part of the process, but after hours and hours of discussion and collaboration, they hadn’t seen the film yet.

“That must have been an emotional moment” I said to Benjamin. “Very much so. The film begins with Ibelin running through the world of Azeroth, he was known to run the route every time he logged into the game. [At the screening for his friends] they began crying right away, yeah. After the screening, they told me that ‘this is how we remember Ibelin’, this is exactly how we remember Ibelin. Which is a great compliment.”

The friends of Ibelin did have one issue with the film, though it showed the humour and cheek that Mats put into his character. Ree explains, “They told me that I made one mistake. I was a bit nervous, I asked, what do you mean? I was thinking, ‘does this mean that I have to work one more year with the film?’ However, I was told that Mats, and by extension Ibelin, liked his women wearing a lot more leather.”

Showing the real Mats Steen

It’s in this anecdote that, if you’ve watched the film, you can understand how Mats expressed himself through this digital character. Mats was quite the ladies man in World of Warcraft, and he also had a wicked sense of humour. His friends quickly pointed out the kind of clothes and the kinds of female-presenting avatars he liked, and the film was fixed. When asked if there was something the team couldn’t capture for the documentary, Ree responds in the negative. All the director wanted, and all Mats’ friends and family wanted too, was to show Mats’ as he was, and judging by what Ree says, that’s all Mats wanted too.

“That was one thing… he really wanted to be remembered, because he lived such a short life, he really wanted to have an impact and be remembered. Also, he would never have wanted to be portrayed as a saint. He wanted to be portrayed to us as human, but with all negative sides, too.”

Ree is referring to parts of the film where Mats shows his frustration and anger at living with Duchennes, living in a wheelchair, and not being able to live as others do. It’s a tender part of the film as we see Mats push away his friends for a time, before finally admitting to them how he lived in the real world, beyond Azeroth.

“I think it made a more fascinating and truthful, more authentic portrayal of him,” says the director. He continued, “I think it's important to know we are drawn to people, who usually have kind of opposite character traits. So, Ibelin will be very friendly, honourable, a very good listener. But he could also be a person who could lie, or would lash out. And it's all these kinds of opposites that are very truthful to how we behave in real life.”

Mats Steen, Netflix

It’s a powerful section of the film because it shows how flawed and angry we can all be. Ree never wanted to portray Mats “as a Disney character,” we needed to see him as everyone else saw him, not only because that tells a great story, but because it strengthens the concept of the documentary - that friendship and love has no bounds, and it can be found in all places, no matter if we get angry, become frustrated, are living with a disability, or simply like our ladies in leather. Little moments like this show how Mats lived his life through this game getting to shrug off the confines of his condition and wheelchair, and live.

When asked how Mats’ parents reacted to seeing these sides of their son, Ree explained, “I think they wanted to be part of, and included in the process. The film was part of their healing process and a way to understand their son better. They had no comments, and they also liked that we discovered - a full human being.

It’s clear from the footage of Mats’ parents shown in the film that they were shocked by the life Mats lived through Ibelin. On the surface, while Mats was still here, they saw someone escaping into entertainment, but they weren’t aware of what actually took place within that game world. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin doesn’t only show how technology can overcome obstacles, but how it can connect us all.

It’s more than ‘just a game’

And it’s here that I want to get a little more serious.

Video games have, for countless years, and even in today’s climate, been derided as a “waste of time” or been accused of having nothing to give the world. They’re often seen as immature or derivative. However, this young man who was permanently strapped into a wheelchair, had to use adapted hardware to play his favourite game, breathed and fed through tubes, lived a full and wonderful life all because of one game. A handful of code and computer graphics.

He took many of those friendships beyond the game, to Facebook, Skype; he connected with others and while he never showed them his disability, due to the possible stigma and prejudice he felt they might feel, he made friends. Best friends. He fell in love. He felt genuine, beautiful human emotions that every single person deserves to feel. Because of a video game.

Blizzard Activision

I once walked the paths of Azeroth in a guild filled with strangers I met online. We quested together, chatting nonsense in between the search for items and weapons or visits to the auction house. I didn’t know any of these people half as much as Mats knew his friends. And yet, when my daughter died, and I’d been missing from the game for a couple of weeks, many of them reached out. I got messages of support, some telling their stories of loss. A few of them let me cry, some let vent my turmoil, all of them offered solace in the one thing we shared, World of Warcraft.

I asked Benjamin one last question before the end of our discussion, ‘what message do you want viewers to take away from the life of Mats and Ibelin?.’ The answer was simple; “Well, the first thing is, I’d like people to just, ask your friends, how are you doing? And really mean it.” Ree further explained, “Mats did that all the time, and had many ways of asking that question - he truly meant it. The second thing he did was, he prioritized his friends. He had the time to listen. And it seems easy to do, but we rarely do it.”

When Mats died and his death was announced on the personal blog he kept, this was how his guildmates in World of Warcraft found out. As the film shows, they all began to reach out to the family. Ree describes this further, “Mats asked this [question] all the time, and I think that's one of the reasons why around 50 people contacted the family after his passing, telling stories about how much he had fundamentally changed their lives, and what kind of friend he was. It’s better to ask than not.”