No half-baked performances: How playing with a live audience turns video games into performance art | Games

tThis weekend I spent over eight hours in a theater playing a video game about donkeys, reincarnation, and organized labor with 70 other people. Political, unpredictable, and packed with wordplay, Asses.Masses is, on the one hand, a fairly rudimentary-looking video game created by Canadian artists Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim with a small team of collaborators. But the setting (in a theater, surrounded by others, all shouting advice and opinions and working together on puzzles) transforms it into a work of collective performance art.

Here’s how it works: On a pedestal, in front of a giant projected screen, sits a controller. In the seats: the public. Whoever wants to stand up and take control can do so and becomes the avatar of the crowd. The game begins with a series of questions, most about donkeys, some in different languages, and it quickly becomes obvious that you must work together to answer them correctly. Someone in our crowd spoke Spanish; another knew the answer to an engineering question; I knew, somehow, that a donkey is called jennet.

This is what makes the game a collective experience. Typically, no more than one person gets their hands on the controller, but everyone is still involved as you guide a group of donkeys on a long, surprising, and increasingly surreal quest to reclaim their jobs from the farm machines that have made them redundant.

Over the course of 10 chapters (with, thank goodness, food and frequent breaks), we take control of a whole cast of donkeys with funny names, reflect on collective action, industrialization and labor politics, debate what to say and what to do, and laugh. a lot in the most daring parts. Without spoiling it, the show’s content warnings give you a clear idea of ​​what to expect: references to violence, strong language, simulated sex (donkey), simulated sex (human), police brutality, as well as references to drug use and suicide. I was amused to discover that this Glasgow performance sparked a minor moral panic in a group called Parents Watch Education, which the Daily Record exploited under the headline “Parents criticize show aimed at teenagers that simulates sex with donkeys, murders and drugs“. (The program is advertised for ages 14 and up and heavily prioritizes humor over realism.)

Asses.Masses is a thought-provoking game that is worth your time for its even more interesting gameplay. It is also, and it must be said, a true test of endurance. I had to bend down for a couple of hours in the middle to go lie down for a while; It had been many years since I had played a video game for eight hours straight. Luckily, I brought a friend with more stamina, who told me what I’d been missing before taking over for the final chapters. At one point, overwhelmed by the audience’s differing opinions, I put down the controller, put my hands on my head, and silently empathized with every union or labor organizer who’s ever had to corral and prioritize the ideas of a stubborn membership.

The game could have done more with the idea of ​​herd mentality – I’m pretty sure few of our group’s decisions actually amounted to anything, and really what we were mostly doing was watching someone else play rather than actively participating. In that sense, it was like a Twitch live stream. Theater people tend to get very excited about anything that incorporates video game elements into performances, but I often wonder if that’s because they’re not necessarily familiar with the mass participation and crowd dynamics that video games generate. always inspire, whether through multiplayer, streaming or simply a lively online conversation.

It made me want to invite friends over to my house and pass the controller around all day like we used to do when we were in our early 20s. My friend remembered a video game book club she used to run, where six people would play a game like What Remains of Edith Finch together (and laugh about it, in that specific case). Asses.Masses is designed specifically around collective play, but I can think of many shorter, more challenging games that could be organized this way and inspire an interesting reaction from the audience. And if the number of people engaging with Twitch is any indication, I think a lot of people would come.

Stumbling out of the theater and into the rainy Glasgow night, I felt a real sense of camaraderie with the small audience I had been playing to. Often when I finish a game, I’m alone in the living room in the middle of the night, while my family sleeps, and I have no one to turn to to discuss it. This time, I had a whole group of people to debrief with and it reminded me that it’s always the addition of human players that livens up soulful games.

Assess.masses is in a world tour until September 2026

what to play

I have two spooky (but not too scary, because I’m a coward) recommendations for Halloween week. First up: The Séance of Blake Manor, a popular horror detective game that Keith loved, which features an eccentric cast of characters gathered in a gothic hotel for a seance on All Hallows Eve. And second: Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival, a limited-time annual virtual Halloween party originally created as a lockdown replacement for real-life gatherings. Here, you create your own ghost with a drawn face, carve virtual pumpkins, and then head to a spooky little microworld to show them off to other players. There’s a surprising amount to explore, from hayrides to spooky movie theaters to a haunted house escape room. It will be available until about a week after Halloween and is available at itch.io on a pay-what-you-want basis.

Available in: personal computer
Estimated playing time: 15-20 hours (The Blake Manor session), two hours (Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival)

what to read

• The biggest news from last week is that Microsoft is launching Halo on PlayStationa sentence that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Specifically: a remake of the original (and better, don’t @ me) Halo: Combat Evolved will launch on all platforms next year, with Xbox executives spreading the idea that console exclusives are now simply outdated. As As former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra put it.: “Go tell that to Nintendo.”

• a report of Insider business information describes how EA management has been asking its employees to use their Internal AI “for almost everything,” from coding to promotion conversations. Several employees expressed concern that they are essentially being paid to train their replacements and, in the meantime, create even more work for themselves to fix AI’s mistakes.

• After crossovers with everything from KPop Demon Hunters to Daft Punk, the next big Fortnite collaboration has been announced: The Simpsonswhich features a complete map of Springfield as well as character skins. It launches on Saturday.

What to click

Question block

Reader Emily asks this week’s question:

“I read your article about the game. baby steps and it sounded very similar to Getting over it with Bennett Foddy. It’s very frustrating because it’s very difficult and you often end up going back to the beginning and having to start over, but at the same time it’s compelling. What are the most deliberately difficult but engaging games to play?

You’ve made a clever connection here, Emily, because Bennett Foddy is one of the three main developers (and voice actors) behind it. baby stepsand a natural extension of their game design philosophy of making players howl in self-pity. (Here is a interesting talk talked about suffering and games.) Foddy’s work is a masterclass in this, and makes the interesting observation that, since the 1990s, games have focused on eliminating suffering, making things easier for the player. In doing so, they have taken away something that made them so interesting.

I play a lot of games that make me suffer, for reasons Foddy has helped me understand: the greater the pain, the greater the gain (and the less likely you are to get bored – my personal hell). The most memorable have been the aforementioned Baby Steps, all in the dark souls/FromSoft canon (although not Sekiro, which really bothered me), cup head, super meat boy, Return and of course Hollow Knight: Silk Songwhat will I do definitely finish soon.

If you have a question for the ask block, or anything else to say about the newsletter, hit reply or email us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.