Marc Loths is nominated for the A MAZE. Awards with his meditative exploration game This Too, Shall Pass an art game about climate crisis and the ephemeral nature of everything. He works and lives in New Zealand.

A MAZE.: How would you describe yourself?
Marc Loths: I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm not sure if I ever will. Maybe I'd describe myself as a sorcerer of ludomancy, that would be fun.

A MAZE.: Are you a wild heart? If yes, what makes you think you’re a wild heart?
Marc Loths: I think I'm a wild heart. Mainly because I feel a constant sense of restlessness, like a ceaseless need to create art and change the world. I don't really feel like I fit in with calm, collected every day life, so I suppose that would make me a wild heart.

A MAZE.: Why did you start making games or playful media works?
Marc Loths: I started making games at a pretty young age, first making board game versions of my favourite video games, then modding games and at 11 I got into Gamemaker. I played a lot of make believe as a child as well. I think the reason I started doing that was because I was so fascinated by the art of creating interactive things and the worlds that are possible to experience through that. I had, and hopefully still have, a pretty active imagination and a burning drive to express that.

A MAZE.: Who (or what) is your biggest inspiration? Think beyond games too - musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists, scientists, …
Marc Loths: One of my biggest inspirations is the artist Alex Pardee, who paints monsters and things that don't exist in an incredible messy comic book like style. I draw a lot from the way his art looks and feels and also his process. Beyond that, I'm very inspired by experimental and unusual film, especially the works of Alejandro Jodorovsky, Richard Linklater (Waking Life especially has left a huge impact on me) and Lars von Trier. Another one worth mentioning in music is a lot of black metal. The Edge Chronicles, a series of novels by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell being another. A lot of things inspire me. Maybe too many, it gets a bit chaotic sometimes.

A MAZE.: Where can we find this in your work?
Marc Loths: I think my inspirations are reflected in my work through the way that I approach my process. A lot of what I do is extremely iterative, with constant reflection on what I have in front of me and how I can find meaning in those things. It's always a question of, how do I dig deeper? Everything needs to have a reason for me, I try to make everything loop back into something that relates to what I'm trying to say with my art, whether that be something I initially decided on or a message that evolved from working on the project.

A MAZE.: What message(s) are you sending out with your works?
Marc Loths: Whatever message my work is sending depends on the work, really. Some of it is very self-indulgent, wallowing in emotions and feelings, some of it is more political in a broader sense and yet more work is more in the vein of ludic exploration. A lot of my recent work focuses on climate change and capitalism and I feel like things that I am currently starting to work on will lean more towards the self indulgence again. I believe it's good to have a mix of everything in what you do. Have your vegetables and still treat yourself with some cake once in a while, you know.

A MAZE.: Is there a repeating pattern in all of your works the players may experience?
Marc Loths: I believe there are some patterns in my work, if you look at it through the right lense. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this in the past, where I really struggled to come to terms with the fact that all my work is so different. I don't exactly have a house style, at least visually. I've come up with the term psychedelic fantasy to describe the things I make, which I feel fits quite well. All throughout there's always elements of surrealism and other worlds that can't possibly exist. At least that's the things that interest me the most.

A MAZE.: What influences your work more: Past (history), present (contemporary) or future (scifi) and what are your sources?
Marc Loths: I think the influence on me between past, present and future wavers between the three for me. I draw a lot from real life history, current events and what might be in the future. I have a huge interest in transhumanism, which I often blend with what's happening in the world and what's happening inside my head.

A MAZE.: What does responsibility towards your players mean to you as an artist?
Marc Loths: Responsibility towards my players to me means to let players have to put in a little effort to engage with my work. I believe the viewer exists to serve the art as much as the art exists to serve the viewer. With a lot of mainstream games, what you see is that they pander to their audience to a point where it becomes difficult for me to take them seriously as interactive experiences, both in ludic and narrative aspects. I want to see more art that expects me to engage with it, art that wants me to make up my own mind about it.

A MAZE.: What impact is the current pandemic having on you and your work?
Marc Loths: I'm one of the few people who are blossoming through this pandemic. It's an exciting time, there's so much happening, it's never a dull day. On top of that, being stuck at home for weeks on end is doing amazing things for me, I'm able to get enough rest and be endlessly creative with no distractions.

A MAZE.: If there is something wrong in the field of games / playful media, what would you fix first?
Marc Loths: There's a lot of things wrong in the field of games, and I don't even know if they can all ever be fixed. The thing I'd fix first if a genie gave me three wishes, I'd wish to mature the medium ahead by a few decades. It's frustrating to see games being treated as less than other mediums, leading to terrible working conditions for studios because "you're lucky to be here", journalism that has little respect for itself and ends up circling the same conversation about easy modes every few weeks and corporations that create cynical money machines with what are essentially toys that take hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.

A MAZE.: What are the three games someone who never played a game before should play? Why those?
Marc Loths: My three games that everyone should play as of 2020 are:
- Breath of the Wild, as an example of an incredibly well made, polished game that showcases the incredible complexity that can arise from simulated worlds.
- VR Chat, as a window into the raw chaos that is the emerging transhuman experience and potential future of human connectedness.
- Memories of a Broken Dimension by XRA, as an example of games as art and tools for expression.

A MAZE.: How do you relax and find balance?
Marc Loths: I'm not entirely sure I've ever found balance. I like to relax by painting, meditating and daydreaming, but balance is entropy and when the entropy hits, I become restless so the circle keeps going.

A MAZE.: What are the main challenges for artists in your country to sustain themselves?
Marc Loths: New Zealand is a very expensive place to live and it is very difficult to make money. On top of that, I think most artists including myself know very little about how to run a business and what the right way to do things professionally actually looks like, making it incredibly difficult to live on art. I think if people were taught business and taxes in high school, as boring as those topics are, we'd see a lot more self-sustaining artists.

A MAZE.: How do you see interactive arts in 10 years from now? In 2030! Tell us your vision.
Marc Loths: My 2030 vision is that interactive arts will continue to gain in validity and you'll hopefully find more interactive exhibitions in galleries and smaller indie studios being able to survive as boutique businesses. I imagine there will be a lot more work being done in VR/AR as more tools and workflows pop up to create content for that. In general, the huge bubble where the "games audience" is treated as a huge homogeneous blob of teenage boys is going to burst and we'll start seeing a lot more financially sustainable games, along with experimental work, that appeals to much more defined, smaller audiences.

A MAZE. Magazine

A MAZE. Magazine

Interviews

A MAZE. Magazine

Marc Loths