Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are the Canadian theater-makers behind asses.masses — an eight-hour live RPG where an audience shares a single controller to guide a group of unemployed donkeys fighting to reclaim their labor from machines. It's toured from Helsinki to Los Angeles, and after 55 performances, no two shows have ever gone the same way.
In this conversation, we talk about how they built the game from YouTube tutorials in a 300-seat theater with no budget, why donkeys became their central symbol (the answer involves a 15th-century woodcut, the global skin trade, and four years of development), and how they designed a game that assumes no single person holds all of the answers — on purpose.
We also get into the political stakes of a work that keeps touring as the conversation around AI and labor keeps sharpening around it.
Read my full piece on
asses.masses at killscreen.com, and subscribe to the Killscreen newsletter for new writing on games and culture every Tuesday and Thursday.
Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by
Nick Sylvester.
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What is The Killscreen Podcast?
Join host Jamin Warren on conversations with someone of the most unique and experimental artists, designers, and thinkers in the worlds of games, play and culture
Jamin Warren founded Killscreen and has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames." Additionally, he has served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art's design department, acted as cluster chair for the Gaming category for the Webbys, and hosted Game/Show for PBS Digital Studios.