On January 9th the YouTube community was shaken when one of the most well-known and oldest creators on the platform announced his retirement. Matthew Patrick, more affectionately known as MatPat, is stepping away from YouTube. His reason for retiring is to spend more time with his family, especially his wife and his adorable 5-year-old son.

The four “theory” channels he founded will remain on YouTube and each will be hosted by hand-picked channel producers and fan-favorite theorists. Lee Collins who was a long-standing editor for the Theorist channels will take over the Film Theory channel. Amy Roberts, another long-time employee, will continue as host of Style Theory. Newcomer Santiago Massa or “Santi” who joined the theorist team a little over a year ago will host Food Theory. Finally, Tom Robinson, a long-time writer for the team, will become the new host of Game Theory.

However, MatPat will remain on GTLive which was at one point his live-streaming channel but has now become a channel where he analyzes games, reacts to analog horror videos, and crafts theories in unscripted, unedited sessions.

 While Matpat has stated he will no longer be hosting the dedicated theory channels he will remain behind the scenes and will be creating his original creative content in new mediums for his community. 

This news devastated fans across the platform, myself included, but his reasoning was so genuine and heartfelt that it was a truly bittersweet moment. 

In his retirement announcement, he explains all of this in much greater detail, and while I wanted to inform you of this massive development in the YouTube community, I also wanted to give myself a chance to reflect on what this means to me, which is a big part of my column.

I watched his retirement video in tears, much like a lot of other fans I know in the community did. Once those tears dried, I was left somewhat lost. There was so much I wanted to say and so much I still wanted to see from the Game Theory channel I knew and loved that I honestly wasn’t sure how to cover this news. So I waited hoping that in his final video, I would be inspired and as always, he did not disappoint.

“Loyal game theorist, how do you say goodbye?” Matthew Patrick’s first few words of his final game theory video. After a nine-week countdown of videos ranging from the old-school indie horror of Five Nights and Freddy’s and Hello Neighbor on Game Theory, to celebrating his heritage and teaching us the history of bread on Food Theory. Using his final stream of videos to cross things off his “content creator bucket list.”

 His final Game Theory centers around where it all began, diving into, ironically, the mathematical concept of game theory. He explains this was the idea for the final Game Theory long in advance saying “In fact Steph and I knew that it was likely that the last episode of Game Theory would be about game theory. Why? Because it’s everywhere!”

In his final video, he explains how the concept of game theory surrounds us everywhere and how we interact with it every day. The concept of Game Theory in simple terms is the study of strategic choice, “it’s math that tells you who’s gonna make what choice.” Think of the prisoner dilemma or the trust game for example. But how does this mathematical concept relate to us as viewers or just people in normal life?

Well, Game Theory more than math it’s psychology, about getting the best possible outcome for those involved, including yourself. Mathew Patrick boils this down into four key steps: Be cooperative, don’t be a pushover, be forgiving, and be honest and open about your strategy. Doing all of this will help you and the people you work with feel more comfortable and be willing to risk losing for the possibility of both of you winning.

 It’s about a firm and fair system where everyone can win. Want another example? Think about YouTube channels that collaborate and work together to produce content, this helps all of the channels involved and in turn, the platform thrives. Or more reflectively, Game Theory the channel is a result of this level of trust and cooperation between its audience and the team of people working on the scripting and editing process. For a more in-depth look at their story please watch the video.

As viewers we participate in Game Theory just by watching one of their videos, by trusting the content Matpat has provided we’ve helped him build something truly indescribable. A community, a family, a bunch of nerds on the internet, no matter how we may view ourselves,  we are theorists. We stand together as we enter a new generation of the theorist team and I for one could not be more excited.

Mathew Patrick, on behalf of many fans and theorists…thank you for everything!