KNOWLEDGE
A MAZE TOTAL DIGITAL
W
e flutter through concrete,
fluorescent-lit hallways and
outside into a permanent golden hour.
Above our heads, a gigantic flamingo
looms, frozen forever in almost-flight.
The bird has been the symbol of A
Maze Berlin for a while now: founder
Thorsten S. Wiedemann associates the
brightly coloured animal with
playfulness, provocation, and of course
John Waters’ outrageous cult film Pink
Flamingos. “The flamingo is a strong
animal,” Wiedemann tells us. “It looks
beautiful. They have this social aspect,
gathering in herds, and also this kind
of balance, you know?” The flamingo
is everything he wants A Maze to be,
and to champion in the videogames it
showcases each year – contemporary,
inventive and avant-garde.
A Maze Total Digital, then, is
perhaps the most flamingo-like the show
has ever been. It’s a fully virtual event: to
attend, we must simply download the
free build from Itch.io. When we log in,
we’re dropped into an edited version of
artist Moshe Linke’s virtual art gallery
Brutalism: Prelude On Stone, which has
been adapted to house, among other
things: a giant screen livestreaming
a variety of speakers and talks; a fully
playable exhibition of the games up for
awards this year, all able to be voted
on by visitors; a cinema room; a
functioning merch stand; a showcase of
an international zine project; a
Kickstarter monument; a togglable live
text chatroom overlay through which
visitors can talk to each other; beer-
shaped Easter eggs to hunt and ‘drink’.
Oh, and an entire flock of flamingos, of
which we are one. Each represents a
different visitor, with usernames floating
over their heads. As we browse the
showfloor, we spot indie developer
friends strutting about on their long pink
legs – we even bump into Weidemann
checking out the games on show.It is bizarre, and a little bit shonky in
parts – there are a few crashes here
and there while we’re trying to boot up
games, and sometimes we have to
reload the build to fix a technical hitch
or two – but it feels like a revelatory first
step into a whole new
sphere of the industry. In
the wake of Covid-
shutting down in-person
conventions, others seem
to be testing the waters,
too: we briefly admired
indie horror game Eek
2020 last month for giving
us a feeling akin to being
at the world’s biggest and
brashest videogame
conference; shortly afterwards, Devolver
Digital released a similar, but higher-
production-value, tongue-in-cheek
“marketing simulator” in which you
had to watch its game trailers to
progress, continuing a time-honoured
tradition of having its cake and eating
it, too. Neither of them, however, were
anywhere near as ambitious or
sophisticated as the multiplayer –
multivisitor, perhaps – experience of
A Maze Total Digital.
Then again, Wiedemann and
friends had something to prove. Last
year, after the German Senate’sDepartment Of Culture rejected the
festival’s request for funding, A Maze’s
future looked uncertain. But with the help
of the #AMAZENOTDEAD Kickstarter
campaign, they were able to crowdfund
over £45,000 to ensure the show could
go ahead. And then the pandemic hit.
With this year due to be A Maze’s big
comeback, it was difficult to accept that
the festival might not happen, especially
after so many people pitched in to keep
it alive. “We were kind of preparing
very, very quietly,” Wiedemann recalls.
The first idea was to postpone from April
to July. But in May, the
German government
decreed that there were to
be no large-scale events
until the end of August.
“We had to just rethink
everything,” he says,
“because I didn’t want to
postpone it again. And
also, I didn’t want
to just not do it this
year – because somehow
I thought A Maze has to happen.”
Almost immediately, an alternative
plan started to take shape. One of the
main funders, Medienboard Berlin-
Brandenburg, “really supported us –
they said, ‘Hey, do it digital, and do
whatever you want, and how you think
is best.’” Thanks to their sponsors and
the Kickstarter money, the team had the
capacity to make something more than
a minimally engaging stream, something
that would truly represent A Maze:
multiple attendees in a beautiful setting,
live talks and music, an awards show,
a garden, flamethrowers and all.Flock together
Arthouse game festival A Maze Berlin returns with a
revolutionary digital event that celebrates connection
“I didn’t want to
just not do it this
year – because
somehow I
thought A Maze
has to happen”