By Daryl Holmlund

Matt Trumbo has been an avid gamer since childhood. Between November 2004 and July 2006 he spent over 120 real days playing World of Warcraft, attaining level 60 on several characters and becoming the leader of a large guild. He is an engineer for Pelco and lives in beautiful Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife Catherine - to whom he was married in June 2007.

Daryl Holmlund: Give the one paragraph answer to this question: Who is Matt Trumbo?

Matt Trumbo: I don’t think there’s a paragraph there. I am a God-loving nerd who does image processing for a video security company.

DH: What have you been up to lately?

MT: Working really hard, getting a product out the door for the first time. It’s a difficult kind of thing. I had no idea the kind of teamwork that goes into that sort of thing. It’s been a fun new experience. And plus I’m newly married, it’s been fun - I like being married.

DH: What games have you been into?

MT: My first foray into online gaming was Counter-Strike, when I was a freshman in college. I played pretty competitively - I went to a couple tournaments up in Dallas - CPL I think it was - and I went up and played on a team. That was fun.

My senior year in college I got started playing WOW - World of Warcraft - but most people call it WOW.

DH: How did you get started gaming?

MT: My parents - I was home schooled as a child - and my parents were pretty strict; and they were very adamant with me - of course not my (younger) brother or sister - that they didn’t want me playing video games all the time. The surest way to make sure that someone is incredibly focused on something is to deny it from them, and so I was just hooked on Nintendo from the time I was like 4 years old because I didn’t have one, and every time I went over to a friends house I would say, ‘Hey, lets play Nintendo,’ and I’ve always been that way about video games. I really like it. I find it relaxing.

DH: Funny, ‘cause I was the opposite. I didn’t have a system at home and I would go over to friends houses and I was just awful and got destroyed and would rather watch people play than play myself.

MT: Different strokes for different folks.

DH: What was it that kept you into World of Warcraft?

MT: I don’t think my answer would be much different than any other player of World of Warcraft: The relationships. I mean, the game itself - it’s probably the most fun MMO (Massively Multi-player  Online Game) ever made, and its still dreadfully boring - even compared to most video games. There’s just not a whole lot to it - you just press buttons. Your character could pretty much play itself pretty easily. Its no coincidence that there’s a huge botting community in World of Warcraft in which people write programs that play their characters for them. If you can write a program that can do it, then anyone can do it, but it might not be very hard to play. And that’s just to say it’s a pretty easy game to get a grasp of. Though when I played it, I did it because of the people I played with.

DH: You once were the leader of a large guild - what kind of community was there in that organization?

MT: My guild was part of a large gaming community beforehand - it had its own message board outside of World of Warcraft - so a bunch of us gamer types decided to go play World of Warcraft together. When we started playing the game, I was not one of the initial leaders of the guild or anything like that. I just had a new girlfriend - that became my wife, and I’m still shocked by that, by the way, that she let me play this game and we didn’t break up or anything like that. Initially I was just an average, everyday joe - a grunt - in the guild; trying to level my character to 60. As you progress through the game you get levels, capped at 60 when they first started the game. After I got to 60, I got more into the team component of World of Warcraft, which is 40 man raiding. You take 40 people from the same team and you go and kill dragons and various things. Once I got into that sort of team role - for me, if there is inept leadership it just irritates me. And there was inept leadership occurring, and so I found myself in a leadership role because no one else was willing to do it.

DH: Do you still keep in touch with members of the guild?

MT: Absolutely. There’s a few that live here in Colorado that I see every couple months. Nice guys, about my age; we sit around and talk about video games. I think one of them has quit the game, the other one still plays. When I went out for a business trip to my company’s headquarters in California, I actually drove a hundred miles to go see one of them. I had the rental car, an afternoon off - went and had lunch with him. It was amazing because it really wasn’t like meeting some guy for the first time. I already knew him. It’s not just typing with these people. It goes beyond the stilted interaction of typing. You get ‘ventrilo’ or ‘teamspeak’ and you have microphones and headphones and you’re conversing in this atmosphere where everyone can hear you - and so I had talked to these people and knew their personalities well… and so, when I met him in person, it was like, ‘Hey, what’s up? Lets go do something.’

DH: You said the other day that you have had opportunities to witness Christ to people through WOW - how did that come about and what was the response?

MT: In the midst of me having this foul-mouthed personality on there, I was just one of the guys. You know when you’re doing one of these raids - 5-6 hours - there’s a lot of down time, so you just talk - it goes to religion, it goes to politics, ethics… and I was known as a good leader and a fair and equitable guy. And people would ask questions about why there were rules and structures within the guild, and I’ve always found it to be quite difficult for unsaved people to really have an ethical place of appeal, a foundation. So I would say, this is how it's supposed to be, or you did something wrong - getting down to those brass tacks - and my ethical foundation was revealed, and people were blown away that I could handle a lot of the vulgar things that go on in the game, and still let Christ shine through my ethical judgment. A lot of people would ask a lot of question. I don’t know that anyone ever got saved because of this, but there were a lot conversations.

It’s kind of terrifying, too, because its not just one on one conversations. When I’m on there saying, Yeah I’m a Christian - this is why I believe it., there are 50 people saying, I can’t believe you’re a Christian for this reason or this reason - its terrifying.

DH: What do you see as a benefit that comes from playing MMOs?

MT: In terms of relationships, it really does help with building relationships. And there’s always the opportunity to share the gospel. As far as edification in your relationship with God, its kind of like asking how does basketball benefit your relationship with Christ - it just doesn’t quite fit. There are certain ways that it can help you work out your ‘walk the walk’, so to speak. You’ve got to do it in a video game just like you do when you’re in a super competitive mode playing soccer or basketball - or at work - you’ve got to still be a Christian where people will say, ‘Man, there’s something different about him.’

DH: There are some church groups that will have Halo type parties as outreach…

MT: It gets that foot in the door. If a church was to have a Halo or WOW party, your average non-saved nerd that plays will say, ‘Your church is doing this? I’ve got to check this out.’ It could be a real good foot in the door - if it was done right.

DH: Do you think there is a line in video game violence that shouldn’t be crossed?

MT: I’ve always had a good ability to disassociate fantasy from reality, and a good grasp of a real social life - my school friends and other real life friends - and it never really crossed over. They were very separate for me. With violent video games like Counter-Strike or Halo, I get about as much violence ‘tickle’ over it as I do about soccer or hockey. And I will go, ‘Yes, that was a great shot!’ for Halo or for soccer. It’s a competition. There are people who do not have those same filters.

DH: What do Christian men need to watch out for?

MT: Addiction. Even I was addicted on some level to it. The times when I think about going back to WOW is when I’m bored. It is such a filler of time, like nothing else. Its really indescribable to someone who’s never really gotten into it. It just fills every second of time if you want it to. And it can start to eat into other areas of your life. Here’s an anecdote from my life: We were on a flag football team - a bunch of guys from my best friend’s apartment complex. We played against all the fraternity teams and for some unknown reason we turned out to be pretty good. We were in the semifinals of the entire tournament and we were going to make a couple hundred bucks per person for winning, but I had a conflict with a WOW raid at the same time as this game. I ended up making the choice to lead the WOW raid. My team ended up losing the game and I’ve never lived this down with my Baylor friends. It was bad. That was one of those moments when my then fiance, now wife, said, "Baby, OK, I think you’ve crossed the line a bit there. You made the choice to value a WOW crew, whom you’ve never seen, over a bunch of your real life friends."  I had let those lines be crossed in my world. That would be what I would recommend you not let happen. Don’t let those lines be blurred. Everything in that game needs to be just a game. You got to be sure you make that valuation. Everything in the real world, not matter how small - whether its your wife asking you to take out the garbage or the finals of a flag football tournament - need to be over the most important things in WOW or Halo or whatever game you’re playing.

DH: You have more or less quit playing since you were married last summer. How has that been? Any withdrawal?

MT: I quit cold turkey. I have not played it since I quit. I’ve had other stuff to fill time. There are other video games that I play that aren’t as consuming.

DH: Like playing Risk versus playing another board game. When you play Risk you know you’re getting into it for 5 or 6 hours, where other games are much less commitment.

MT: That’s exactly right. I love that analogy. Very much like that. The first month or two after starting the new job, Catherine and I weren’t married yet [and were still living long distance], and I would come home from work and it was a new feeling. I would eat dinner and say, ‘Well, what now? I’ve gotten done with my stuff for the day, its time for WOW…’ And that was unhealthy; I was a little scared by it. But it went away. Not even a week after that, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I went running more. Physical activity is a good way to get your mind off that sort of thing.

DH: “Husbands love your wives” (Eph. 5:25) - what does this mean?

MT: I’ve told Catherine this, and I think this holds true for any marriage: You need to put your spouse ahead of yourself in all things. If you care more about your spouse and their well-being, and they feel the same way about you, you’re not going to have any problems. This verse is God’s reminder to husbands.

DH: Any favorite verse or passage (from the Bible) that you’d be willing to share with us?

MT: I absolutely love Romans. Speaking of addictions, I’m addicted to Romans. It's everything that a Christian needs, such a theologically complete package. I could read Romans over and over and over again for my devotions. I get something new out of it every time.