Netflix documentary film “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin”, which was released on last Friday, looks into the bountiful online life of one Norwegian gamer who died when he was only 25. Although he did not reveal himself that much to his numerous fellow online gamers, he closely interacted with them for more than 10,000 hours before his eventual death in 2014, and it is often quite poignant to observe how he showed his better sides to others in their online world.

At the beginning, we get to know a bit about the private life of this Norwegian gamer in question. Mats Steen was born to one ordinary couple living in Oslo, Norway in 1989, and his parents were certainly quite devastated when Steen was diagnosed to have a rare type of hereditary degenerative muscular disease a few years later. At first, young Steen simply looked like being rather weak and clumsy in his physical movements, but this only got worse and worse as time went by, and he eventually had to rely a lot on his wheelchair.

While his parents and his younger sister tried a lot for making Steen participate more in their social life, Steen’s attention got gradually drawn to online computer games. He frequently spent many hours on playing online games every day, and his parents could not possibly say no to him even though they sincerely wished he got interested in other stuffs besides online games because, well, they were well aware of how time kept running out for him as well as them.

Steen’s medical condition got much worse during last few years of his short life. He tried to keep going on as much as possible, but he inevitably became too weak to breathe for himself, and his fingers also became too weakened to play Warcraft, which was incidentally his favorite online game. As a matter of fact, he was constantly monitored by a series of different caregivers every day around that point, and both he and his family became more aware of his impending death than before.

Not long before his death, Steen sent his parents his user ID and password to the Warcraft website. After he died, his parents checked out what he had been doing on that online game website during last several years, and what they discovered there was quite revealing to say the least. He actually made a lot of online friends as playing here and there along with them, and, to his parent’s surprise, most of them immediately sent their heartfelt condolence to Steen’s parents when Steen’s parents posted the notification on his recent death on his personal blog site.

Around that point, the documentary delves a lot deeper into Steen’s online life, and that is where it becomes quite extraordinary. Via the digital animation based on the visual elements from the online world of Warcraft, it immerses us more into what was shared among Steen and his many online friends, and then it gives us the vivid reenactment of the excerpts from the vast online records generated among Steen and his fellow online gamers. This looks rather artificial at first, but director Benjamin Ree and his crew and voice cast members handle their materials with enough care and sensitivity, and the overall result is pretty absorbing to say the least.

Just like all the other online gamers, Steen had some fun with presenting himself via his game avatar, which was named, yes, Ibelin. He presented Ibelin as a freelancing detective who can solve problems and mysteries for others around him in addition to having some adventures from to time, and it did not take much time for him to draw the attention of many other online gamers, mainly thanks to his likable personality glimpsed behind Ibelin. He soon made a lot of online friends here and there, and he became closer to some of them as they came to interact more with each other outside their online game world.

We are later introduced to several close online friends of his, and they all have each own personal story about Steen. Although he always drew the line between him and others as keeping hiding himself behind Ibelin, he also showed a lot affection and empathy to many of his online game friends, and there is a particularly touching story on how he helped one of them get closer to her autistic son, who also became Steen’s close friend after joining the World of Warcraft for more communication with his mother.

Needless to say, things were not always rosy and pleasant for Steen and his fellow online gamers – especially when he became angrier and more depressed due to his rapidly worsening medical condition. Nevertheless, he eventually came to realize that he had to open himself much more to his online friends than before, and that led to a moving moment of reconciliation and understanding between him and them. After his eventual death, several online friends of his willingly came to the funeral for remembering him more along with his family, and this certainly reminded his family that he did live as fully as he could before his death.

In conclusion, “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin”, which won the Audience Award as well as the Directing Award at the World Cinema Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival early in this year, powerfully shows us how positive human interactions are still possible on the Internet. Yes, we all have seen the many negative sides of the online world in one way or another during last several decades, but we can also be quite understanding and empathetic to others across the Internet, and the documentary surely gives us a remarkable example to remember.