What Playing a 7-Hour Video Game with Strangers in L.A. Taught Me About the Resistance

Why It Matters

The hybrid of gaming, theater, and activism demonstrates a new, scalable model for civic engagement that resonates with digital‑native audiences. It signals entertainment’s growing role as a platform for political discourse and community‑building.

Key Takeaways

• Live‑action game merges theater, gaming, political protest
• Audience controls narrative via cheers, boos, and votes
• Performance critiques AI‑driven job automation
• Seven‑hour format mirrors a full workday experience
• Touring model expands experiential activism beyond campus

Pulse Analysis

The convergence of interactive media and live performance is reshaping how creators deliver political narratives. In the post‑Twitch era, audiences expect participatory experiences that blur the line between spectator and player. "asses.masses" capitalizes on this shift, using a single controller as a communal baton that forces participants to negotiate outcomes in real time. By embedding protest motifs—unjust incarceration, mass layoffs, AI‑driven job loss—within familiar gaming tropes, the show taps into the cultural capital of retro and modern video‑games while delivering a message that feels both urgent and entertaining.

Beyond novelty, the format functions as a microcosm of democratic decision‑making. Audience members vote with applause or dissent, mirroring the consensus‑building required in real‑world organizing. This embodied rehearsal of collective action resonates with current labor anxieties, especially as automation threatens traditional employment. The game’s shifting aesthetics—from pixel‑art to open‑world graphics—reinforce the fluidity of modern protest tactics, while the endurance test of a seven‑hour session underscores the stamina needed for sustained activism. Such immersive experiences can deepen empathy and reinforce solidarity among participants, turning abstract policy debates into tangible, shared stories.

For the entertainment industry, "asses.masses" offers a blueprint for monetizing socially conscious content. Universities, festivals, and even corporate sponsors can host touring versions, leveraging ticket sales, merchandise, and digital streaming rights. The model also opens pathways for creators to experiment with hybrid revenue streams—combining live‑event ticketing, in‑game microtransactions, and post‑show analytics. As audiences increasingly seek purpose‑driven experiences, the success of this performance suggests that future media ventures will blend art, technology, and activism to capture both attention and impact.

What playing a 7-hour video game with strangers in L.A. taught me about the resistance

By Myung J. Chun, Los Angeles Times

The donkeys are pissed off. Put upon, out of work and victims of decades‑long systemic abuse, it’s time, they have decided, to protest.

The donkeys, metaphorically, are us.

At least that’s the premise of “asses.masses,” a video game played by and for a live audience. It’s theater for the post‑Twitch age, performance art for those weaned on The Legend of Zelda or Pokémon. Most important, it’s entertainment as political dissent for these divisive times. Though the project dates to 2018, it’s hard not to draft 2026 onto its narrative. Whether it’s unjust incarceration, mass layoffs or topics centered around tech’s automation of jobs, “asses.masses,” despite generally lasting more than seven hours — yes, seven‑plus hours — is a work of urgency.

Image 1: The audience cheers various decisions made during the playing of “asses.masses” at UCLA Nimoy Theater.

And for the audience at the Saturday showing at the UCLA Nimoy Theater, it felt like a call to arms. Citizens executed in the street for exercising their right to free speech? That’s in here. Run‑ins with authorities that recall images seen in multiple American cities over the past few months? Also in here, albeit in a retro, pixel‑art style that may bring to mind the Final Fantasy series from its Super Nintendo days.

In a city that’s been ravaged by fires, ICE raids and a series of entertainment‑industry layoffs, the sold‑out crowd of nearly 300 was riled up. Chants of “ass power!” — the donkey’s protest slogan — were heard throughout the day as attendees politely gathered near a single video game controller on a dais to play the game, becoming not just the avatar for the donkeys but a momentary leader for the collective. Cheers erupted when a young donkey concluded that “I kinda think the system is rigged against everyone.” And when technological advances, clearly a stand‑in for artificial intelligence, were described as “evil, soulless, job‑taking, child‑killing machines,” there were knowing claps, as if no exaggeration was stated.

“Our theater is supposed to be a rehearsal for life,” says Patrick Blenkarn, who co‑created the game with Milton Lim, interdisciplinary artists from Canada who often work with interactive media.

Image 2: Two artists and video‑game creators in black tops.

“We grew up in a radical political tradition of theater,” says Blenkarn, right, who co‑created “asses.masses” with Lim.

“We grew up in a radical political tradition of theater, where this is where we can rehearse emotional experience — catharsis,” Blenkarn says. “That is what art is supposed to be doing. We have been very interested in the idea that if we come together, what are we going to do and how are we going to do it? What we are seeing in your country, and other countries, is the question of how are we going to change our behavior, and will the people who currently have the controller listen? And if they don’t, what do we do?”

Video games are inherently theatrical. Even if one is playing solo on the couch, a video game is a dialogue, a performance between a player and unseen designers. Blenkarn and Lim also spoke in an interview prior to the show of wanting to re‑create the sensation of gathering around a television and passing a controller back and forth among family or friends while offering commentary on someone’s play style—only at scale. While “asses.masses” could work as a solitary experience at home, its themes of collective action and reaching a group consensus, often through boos or shouts of encouragement, made it particularly well‑suited for a performance.

Image 3: A view outside the UCLA Nimoy Theater.

The UCLA Nimoy Theater played host to “asses.masses” this weekend.

Beginning at 1 p.m. and ending shortly after 8 p.m., coincidentally, says Blenkarn, the length of a working day, not everyone made it to the “asses.masses” conclusion. About a quarter of the audience—a crowd clearly familiar with the multiple video‑game styles represented in “asses.masses”—couldn’t stand the endurance test. In a time of binge‑watching, I didn’t find the length prohibitive. There were multiple intermissions, but those became part of the show as well, as there was no set time limit. Blenkarn and Lim were asking the audience, via a prompt on the screen, to jointly agree upon a length, emphasizing, once again, the importance of collective cooperation.

And “asses.masses” holds interest because it, in part, embraces the animated absurdity and inherent experimentation of the medium. While often in a retro pixel‑art style, at times the game shifted into a more modern open‑world look. The story veers down multiple paths and side‑quests—some requiring wild coordination such as a rhythm game meant to simulate donkey sex, and others more tense, such as “Metal Gear”‑like sneaking, complete with the donkeys hiding in cardboard boxes.

Image 4: Audiences vote, often by cheering or booing, on choices in “asses.masses.”

The way “asses.masses” shifted tones and tenor recalled a game such as “Kentucky Route Zero,” another serialized and alternately realistic and fanciful game with political overtones. Other times, such as the surreal world of the donkey afterlife, I thought of the colorfully unpredictable universe of the music‑focused game “The Artful Escape,” a quest for personal identity and self‑actualization. The donkeys in “asses.masses” are an ensemble, often trying to steer the audience in different directions. As much as some push for a protest as a way for communal healing and progressive action, others take a cynical outlook, viewing that path as “intellectually compromised” by a “commitment to past ideals.”

The goal, says Lim, is to create a sort of game‑within‑a‑game—one that’s being played with a controller and one of debate among a crowd.

“It’s not about having a billion endings,” Lim says. “We understand it’s a theater show, and we as writers have objectives for what we want it to go towards. But the decisions people make in the room really matter. The game is half in the room and half on the screen.”

The audience, for instance, can play a role in keeping certain donkeys alive or deciding what jobs a group of renegade donkeys may choose. Our audience voted for the donkeys to enter the circus, at least until they were deemed obsolete and sent to detention centers, which felt uncomfortably of the moment. Such topicality is what drew Edgar Miramontes, leader of CAP UCLA, to the show, despite his admittance to being largely unfamiliar with the world of video games.

“It doesn’t shy away from the nuances of when organizing happens and what we’re seeing in our world right now,” Miramontes says. “There are instances in which a donkey may die because, in organizing to achieve their goals, these things happen. We have seen this in our Civil Rights Movement and other movements and the current movement that’s happening right now around ICE.”

The Nimoy event, part of UCLA’s current Center for the Art of Performance season, was the 50th time “asses.masses” had been performed. The show will continue to tour, with a performance in Boston set for this upcoming weekend and a stop in Chicago later this year. Our donkeys on Saturday didn’t solve all the world’s inequalities, but they did live full lives, attending raves, engaging in casual sex and even playing video games.

Image 5: A player celebrates during “asses.masses,” live‑action theatrical video game.

The show is an argument that progress isn’t always linear, but community is constant. As one of the donkeys says at one point, “If you aren’t doing something that brings you joy, do something different.”

“In case anyone is like, ‘I don’t want to be lectured at,’ or I don’t want to do all this work, it feels like you’re just having fun with friends,” Lim says. “Maybe revolution doesn’t always look like just this. Maybe it’s also this.”

And like many a video game, maybe it’s a chance to live out some fantasies.

“We do beat up riot cops in the game,” Blenkarn says, “in case anyone is hoping for that opportunity.”