Mats “Ibelin” Steen: Heaven in a Video Game

On November 18, 2014, Mats “Ibelin” Steen ceased his daily thirty-minute run through the villages, fields, forests, hills, and valleys of a virtual world. From then on, he could do his daily run through the villages, fields, forests, hills, and valleys of the spiritual world, in his spiritual body.

His physical body had long since ceased any running in this earthly world, taken down by the Duchenne muscular dystrophy that he had had from birth, and that took his life at the age of twenty-five.

His parents, Robert and Trude Steen, grieved their firstborn son’s death. They were especially devastated that he had never been able to experience friendship and love, and make a difference in other people’s lives. He had been confined to a wheelchair throughout his teenage and adult years. He increasingly avoided outdoor activities and social events. They were sad to see that he spent most of his time alone at his computer, playing video games.

It was only after their son’s death that they learned, to their complete surprise and amazement, that Mats had indeed experienced all those things—and so much more!

Because that’s when the messages started pouring in from his friends.

The life of Mats Steen

Norwegians Robert and Trude Steen welcomed Mats, their firstborn, into this world on July 3, 1989. Unfortunately, Mats was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a hereditary disease that affects mostly boys. It causes the muscles to degenerate and become weakened. Each year that the person lives, he or she progressively loses all mobility to the point of becoming dependent on a respirator to breathe. Symptoms begin appearing between the ages of 2 and 4 years old. The average life expectancy is 30. There is no known cure.

Mats’s parents doted on him. They gave him the best childhood they could within the limitations that DMD imposed. As Mats became more dependent on a wheelchair, his screen time increased. Robert and Trude let Mats play a lot of video games to compensate for the normal childhood activities he was missing out on. However, they worried about his increasing isolation as he got older. They nagged him to go outside and to try to engage in various activities in hopes that he would form relationships with other people and live a fuller life.

In 2014, at the age of 25, Mats died in his sleep. His family was devastated. His parents were suffering one of the worst types of pain any person can experience: the loss of a child. Their pain was compounded by their awareness of the limited life their son had been forced to live.

Mats’s sister, Mia, recounts that she and her parents sat on the sofa and cried.

“It was like time just stood still,” she said. Seeing Mats’s wheelchair without him in it was painfully disorienting to them. None of them could sleep in the initial days following Mats’s death. Those days, they said, were just a blur.

And then it hit them that they should notify readers of Mats’s blog, entitled “Musings of Life,” that he would not be logging on anymore. They were stumped as to how to do it, when Robert suddenly recalled that Mats had given him the password.

They didn’t know if anyone would even see the message, but they felt it was important to make a statement about his passing. And so they began, “Our beloved son, brother and best friend left us . . .” They concluded by leaving Robert’s email address.

Enter Ibelin

To their utter confusion, they started receiving email after email in response to their statement about Mats’s passing. People from around the world wrote to them about Mats, describing how much he had meant to them, and the impact he had had on their lives.

“You should be so proud of your son.”

“Mats was AWESOME.”

“He was so funny, imaginative, and a great writer.”

“I never got the chance to meet him face to face, but I could always tell he was warmhearted and caring.”

“I am grateful for the times we shared.”

“Mats was a real friend to me.”

“He was an incurable romantic and had considerable success with women.”

“What mattered to Mats was being able to spread joy in our lives.”

“Stuff I learned from his example has changed the way I think about life.”

And then Robert and Trude heard from a woman who was Mats’s first love.

People also left over 100 comments and condolences on Mats’s blog in response to the statement the family had written.

Trude was thoroughly discombobulated. “What is this? Who are all these people? Are they completely crazy or what?” she thought. She didn’t understand what was happening as Robert’s inbox steadily chimed with each new email. But she thought that whatever was happening, it “was out of control.”

Soon Mats’s family realized that these people were not strangers. Mats had indeed lived a full life, filled with many friendships. Robert said, “Before Mats passed away, he left behind his password for us. I think this was deliberate. It was obviously something he had hoped we would find. Because behind that password was a world we knew absolutely nothing about.”

The remarkable life of Ibelin

In one of Mats’s blogposts, he wrote that computer gaming is a “gateway to whatever your heart desires.” In the game World of Warcraft (WoW), Mats had crafted the identity of Ibelin Redmoore, his avatar. Within WoW, Mats was able to build relationships and engage with people without his disability being a factor.

In WoW, Mats was a popular, buff young man. He was a leader, a private investigator, and for a time, he was even a womanizer. He belonged to a guild named Starlight in the WoW world of Azeroth.

Mats’s gaming community told his parents what a wonderful, kind-hearted, and generous person their son had been. They told their stories of how “Ibelin”—the name they knew him by—had touched their lives in powerful and positive ways.

They described to Robert and Trude that even though they only knew each other from the game, “there were real friendships, with real fights sometimes, and how they worried about each other.” And now they were grieving, both in game and in real life.

They asked if five of his guild friends could attend Mats’s funeral, which was to be held in Oslo, Norway. These friends came from Norway, Denmark, Finland, England, and the Netherlands. At his funeral, they recounted how Mats was selfless and kind, he was a person who listened, and who welcomed others and included them.

Robert and Trude would later be interviewed on television about Mats and the discovery of his gaming life:

A mesmerizing documentary about Mats and his life as Ibelin premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2024. Here is the trailer:

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, directed by Benjamin Ree, is available on Netflix. We highly recommend this inspirational and uplifting movie.

“The real world”

On his blog, Mats contrasted his in-game life and his life in the real world. “If only . . .” he said. If only he were not handicapped, he could have followed up on his in-game relationships, and formed real relationships in the real world.

But what is the real world?

What was the real world for Mats Steen?

Was the real world the one in which his body prevented him from living the life he lived in his mind? Where he could not run and jump and play? Where he could not kiss and be kissed? Where he could not fall in love and make love?

That world did not correspond to the world of his mind and heart. His physical body was a prison in which his mind and heart were confined.

In World of Warcraft, for many years none of his friends knew that Ibelin was physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair “in real life.” They knew him as a handsome and strong young man. They knew him as a funny, kind person who would have a laugh with them, and also listen to their stories and their troubles. They knew him as someone who gave them ideas and advice for how to solve problems in their real life, such as in their relationships with their family members and friends.

Though they met him in an online game, they knew him as a real human being.

Because that’s exactly what Mats was.

Except in the physical world, with the people who lived physically in his home and community, his body didn’t allow him to fully express his character and personality, his thoughts and feelings, his affection and anger, his love and kindness.

His real world was in fact the virtual world. That was where his virtual body could express the thoughts and feelings of his mind. Every day when he first logged on, he would run a half-hour route through the roads and paths of Azeroth, exulting in the use of his young, healthy, and strong body. Then he would enter into the activities, friendships, and conversations of his day.

And even fall in love.

The world of the mind

You see, video games are worlds of the human mind. They come from the human imagination. They express the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and mental worlds of their human creators.

The people who play these video games are living in a real world. It is the world of the human mind and heart. And especially for those whose physical or mental handicaps prevent them from living a full life in their physical body, it is a world that makes it possible for them to express, as much as that is possible in the virtual space of computer gaming, their real humanity, together with other people, and without any of the limitations that their physical body has imposed upon them.

This is the wonder and the healing power of video gaming.

Of course, the popular and mainstream media is full of gloom and doom about the terrible effects of gaming on all those poor souls who are “addicted” to them. And yes, like everything in this human world, video games do have their dark side.

But there is a reason that despite all the negative press and publicity, hundreds of millions of people continue to flock to video games, many of them building entire lives within the virtual worlds of multiplayer games such as Word of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Guild Wars, and RuneScape.

For the people playing these games, they’re not just entertainment. They are a mindscape. They are a world free from the limitations of the physical world and the physical body, where anyone can be young, strong, and active in a world that expresses the imaginings of the human mind and heart.

And it is a world that real people share with one another. It is a world in which people build real relationships.

It is the world of the mind.

The spiritual world

The spiritual world is also the world of the mind.

In fact, according to Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), the spiritual world is precisely the world of the human mind.

It is a world where not only our spiritual body, but all our surroundings precisely and fully express all our thoughts and feelings, all our motives and ideals, all our love and affection for the people around us. It is a busy, active world where we can engage in all the activities our mind prompts us to engage in, and build all the relationships our heart moves us to—including falling in love.

Except in the spiritual world, the world of the mind is not merely virtual. It is real and solid.

In the spiritual world, our spiritual bodies are real, solid bodies, only they’re made of spiritual substance rather than physical matter. They have all the parts and organs that our physical body has, all of them warm, living, beating, and breathing just like the ones in our physical body. And unlike our physical body, instead of imposing limitations on expressing the ideas and imaginings of our mind, our spiritual body is fully responsive, and fully able to express everything our mind conceives, and everything our heart desires.

Not only that, but we live in a real, solid, living, breathing world. And like the virtual worlds of multiplayer video games, the spiritual world is an expression of the human mind. According to Swedenborg, everything we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch in the world around us is an expression of our own inner thoughts and feelings, and of the thoughts and feelings of all the people around us, creating a real world that expresses the mind and heart both of each individual and of the whole community of people in which we live.

Mats’s real world

This is the world that Mats “Ibelin” Steen has moved on to.

He is no longer trapped in the prison of an increasingly disabled physical body. He now has a young, strong, and healthy spiritual body. And yes, it is the body of a man. It is not the small, frail body he had in his adult years on earth. It is just as tall and fully muscled as his avatar was in World of Warcraft—though I think it’s a little more realistic and better proportioned!

It wouldn’t surprise me if to this day, Mats, aka Ibelin, continues to get up each morning and do his daily half-hour run through the beautiful villages, fields, forests, hills, and valleys of the spiritual world. Only now he can not only see and hear everything around him, but he can smell, taste, and touch it as well. Now the world of his heart and mind is his world.

Now, there is no more mismatch between his mind and his body. Now he is the fully able, healthy, and strong young man that he always was in his mind.

Now he’s living in the real world.

Here is a shorter video version of this post:

For further reading:

• Video Games, Virtual Reality, and Spiritual Reality
• What Does the Bible Say about Video Games? Part 1
• Heaven in a Snowbot
• Amazon vs. Walmart: The Spiritual Shift
• What is the Source of Human Fragility, Sickness, and Disease?
• What Happens To Us When We Die?