Matthew Robert Patrick was born on November 15, 1986 in Medina County, Ohio. Growing up, Patrick struck interests in fine arts, most notably musical theatre. He valued education throughout his student days and spent most of his school career outside of school studying or taking classes. His enthusiasm for learning led him to skip his lunch periods to take classes and to spend his summer vacations taking courses at college campuses. He eventually became the valedictorian of his graduating class, and earned a perfect score on his SAT. His strong academic record earned him a full academic scholarship into Duke University.
Patrick first created a YouTube account under the name "MatthewPatrick13" in 2009. He uploaded numerous videos of his performances and auditions for musical theatre, including one where he sang "It Takes Two" from the musical Hairspray. The first video he put a lot of time to edit was a video he used to propose to his now wife, Stephanie.
On April 18, 2011, he uploaded the first episode of his new show, Game Theory, where he discusses the relationship between reality and Gaming in terms of science, math and culture. Inspired by the YouTube series Extra Credits episode Tangential Learning (March 23, 2011) he created Game Theory with the goal of creating "gaming's tangential learning experience" to show his abilities to companies that might watch his channel. He frequently uploads episodes covering Nintendo characters, as well as popular games such as Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy's, Call of Duty and Pokémon, as well as numerous other games. Early on in the show's history, MatPat was interviewed by Ronnie Edwards, host of his Internet show Random Encounters. After this meeting, Ronnie accepted MatPat's offer to be Game Theory's main Editor. Before this, MatPat was the sole Editor of the show. The first episode of Game Theory that Ronnie edited was How Much is Minecraft Diamond Armor Worth? He occasionally uploads videos commenting on the Gaming market, as well as on other matters that he deems noteworthy. He gained subscribers and his videos were being posted on the front pages of sites such as ScrewAttack and GameTrailers. Game Theory has become known for Patrick's educational, consistent and in-depth approach to game analysis.
Patrick is married to Stephanie Cordato, whom he met while at Duke University. The two became close after creating a Legend of Zelda parody called The Epic of Stew. The couple married on May 19, 2012 in North Carolina. The couple owns a cat named Skip, who occasionally makes appearances in livestreams and is also known as 'CatPat'.
First, he gained the series more attention and exposure by uploading a re-mastered version of the first episode on the channel on October 1, 2013. On October 31, 2013, the second episode, Mansion Midnight, was uploaded. According to Chris Niosi, creator of the series, the episodes were uploaded to the channel and he was given a cut of the revenue each month because he wasn't able to earn money from Google AdSense on his YouTube channel. Within two months, the show was pulled from the channel and the episodes were removed. Niosi stated that the reason behind this was because it didn't perform as well as projected within the first two episodes. In February 2017, Patrick stated in a GTLive episode that "YouTube wouldn't let [the video] be monetized because [...] 'someone else owns this video'. [...] It also deviated far too much from what we did because it [...] had nothing to do with education and Gaming."
On May 12, 2014, Patrick created a second channel called The Film Theorists where he debuted his second show, Film Theory. The first video was uploaded on June 2, 2015, focusing on the science of the TV series Doctor Who. Film Theory follows the same formula as Game Theory, but in relation to films and series as well as the film industry instead of Gaming. Within a month following the first episode, The Film Theorists reached one million subscribers.
Patrick started a Let's Play series called GTLive on August 26, 2015 where he streams mostly gameplay with his wife Stephanie and then uploads it to the GTLive archive channel he created on September 14, 2015. Streams are usually conducted at 4 pm PST. Regular guest appearances on the streams include Jason, the Producer of GTLive, the co-producer Chris, who became part of the streams after standing in for Jason during his wedding, the Patricks' cat Skip, also known as “CatPat,” Peepachu, a cushion in the form of a yellow, rabbit-shaped Peep and a llama plushie, referred to as "Drama Llama". Repeated themes of this livestream include "Mario Maker Wednesday" (abbr. “MMW”), "Motion-Control Thursday" and "Scary Games Friday" (abbr. “TGISGF” for “Thank Goodness It's Scary Games Friday”), also occasionally known as "Spoopy Games Friday". A Common feature is the 'clap-and-a-half' which Patrick reclaimed from his seventh grade Social Studies Teacher. On one live stream, they used Verizon's in-game Minecraft smartphone for ordering pizza as well as taking "the worlds largest [in-game] selfie".
As of 2016, GTLive streams five days per week on average, garnering roughly 80,000 to 110,000 total viewers for each stream.
In 2017, Matthew Patrick and his wife Stephanie Patrick participated in Nintendo's Pokkén Tournament DX Invitational, an event held during E3 2017. He was paired with Allister Singh, the only pro Pokkén Tournament player in the event. His team eventually won the tournament. In the tournament, Patrick played as Empoleon, while his wife Stephanie Patrick played as Scizor.
On March 12, 2018, Matthew and Stephanie announced Stephanie's pregnancy, a baby boy due July 4, 2018.
