By CT Jones
When YouTube star and sport legend MatPat speaks to Rolling Stone, he’s 24 hours from one of many greatest modifications of his life. For nearly a decade, MatPat, whose actual identify is Matthew Patrick, has been the primary host of Game Theorists, a preferred YouTube present that finally expanded right into a multi-channel empire. However that each one modifications on Saturday, March 8, when Patrick will put up his final video as a bunch of Sport Theorists, saying goodbye to the previous 14 years of his life and hopefully, howdy to a future the place other creators like him really feel like retiring isn’t a distance dream, however an attainable risk.
“There’s a number of celebration, nostalgia,” Patrick tells Rolling Stone. “It’s been a wave of feelings. There have been moments over the course of the final month the place there’s that recognition of, that is the final time that I’m moving into the recording sales space or that is the final time that I’m saying this specific catchphrase. [Bittersweet] is one of the best emotion to explain it.”
Within the years since Patrick and his spouse, Stephanie, first launched the Sport Theorists, the channel has turn into well-known for its in-depth evaluation of fashionable fan theories for video video games like 5 Nights At Freddy’s and Mass Impact. It has expanded right into a staff with a number of different hosts, with movies specializing in matters like trend, cooking, and popular culture. Right this moment, Sport Theorists is a YouTube staple, with 17.7 million subscribers on the primary channel alone, and a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of views each month. However that sort of accomplishment requires a large quantity of effort, a devoted staff, and for Patrick, years of working himself into the bottom.
“Whenever you’re one particular person operating 5 separate channels, and also you’re producing wherever between eight and 13 movies every week that each one function you, it’s quite a bit,” he says. “And there’s no wiggle room in that schedule. Not having that ticking clock hanging over my head goes to be extremely refreshing. It’ll be good to get greater than 4 hours of sleep in an evening.”
On Jan. 4, Patrick introduced in a tearful video titled “Goodbye Web” that March 9, 2024, could be his final day internet hosting “Game Theorists.” However saying goodbye isn’t a solitary choice. He and Stephanie have run the channel along with his buddy and chief inventive officer Jason Parker because the starting. In order a gaggle, they determined to announce Patrick’s retirement in a ten week rundown, to permit time for followers to grieve. However for them, the method has additionally reinvigorated their love of the model.
“For the three of us, it’s been this excellent technique of bringing us again to what obtained us began within the first place, which is making movies collectively as a result of we’re having enjoyable,” Patrick says. “It’s been so rewarding to have that second and to have the ability to end on such a excessive notice collectively.
In retiring absolutely from his host position, Patrick turns into one in every of a number of iconic YouTube stars, like Minecraft streamer CaptainSparklez and science YouTuber Tom Scott, quitting to search out different methods to construct their manufacturers apart from starring in a grueling and fixed manufacturing schedule. In 2022, Patrick and Stephanie introduced the sale of Theorist Media, Sport Theorists’s firm, to Lunar X, a U.Okay.-based digital creator startup. The partnership, they mentioned, would permit Patrick and Stephanie to proceed to provide their full slate of movies, and deal much less with the enterprise facet. With the house freed up from now not internet hosting movies, Patrick says he’s excited to have extra to assist make key selections for Theorist programming whereas letting different staff members take the highlight.
Lunar X CEO Lucas Kollmann tells Rolling Stone that because the YouTube ecosystem has developed, the pace of manufacturing means many creators have constructed large franchises and corporations round their work — however haven’t thought-about what it might appear to be to retire. Now, as extra authentic YouTube creatives begin to consider a life outdoors of filming 24/7, Kollman is hopeful that others can use Patrick’s path as a technique to cross the torch to youthful generations.
“Giving all of those channels their very own voice and making a bit extra range between the channels is one thing that excites me,“ Kollman says. “YouTube is a younger platform and neither myself nor Matt are getting any youthful. So having folks now which are slightly bit youthful and may communicate to the subsequent technology is nice for the enterprise.”
Patrick’s work with Sport Theorists has been so prolific that there’s no facet of gaming and fandom that hasn’t been touched by his YouTube profession. And it’s not simply Theorist viewers who’ve acknowledged Patrick’s lengthy legacy. In fall 2023, Patrick had a cameo within the Blumhouse movie 5 Nights At Freddy’s, based mostly on the indie online game that The Sport Theorist channels spent years debating and theorizing about. For Patrick, who solely began posting on YouTube as a result of he was struggling to discover a job in performing, attending to be part of the movie felt like a crowning second — one he’ll proceed to look again on.
“At a sure level in my life, I spotted that theater was not an business that I needed to pursue professionally anymore and I needed to shut the door on that a part of my life,” he says. “So to get invited to be part of the film, and to see audiences have such enormous reactions to that that temporary little cameo was so unbelievably rewarding and concurrently confirmed me that life works within the strangest methods. It gave me a way of finality, closure, and emotional satisfaction as a result of it simply verified that the trail that I took was the proper path for me. I wouldn’t have had it another approach.”
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