Even as I accepted the assignment to attend and write about asses.masses—a daylong collaborative video game art installation brought to Ann Arbor on February 15-16 by UMS—I wondered why I’d made this choice.

It would take me away from my family for nearly an entire Saturday (the program ran from 1-9:30 pm); I’d have to drive from Farmington to Stamps Auditorium on a snowy, freezing February day, all too aware that I’d also be hosting guests in my home the next morning; I had no idea what kind of food would be provided at the event; and while I’m an absolute puzzle fiend, I’m decidedly not a gamer. (The whole idea of Twitch, where viewers can watch others play video games, is something I still struggle to wrap my head around.)

If I’ve learned anything in recent years, though, it’s that I should always follow my curiosity, and I’d repeatedly wondered what this collective all-day video game experience would look and feel like.

My short answer, after attending asses.masses? Community-building. But let’s start with the basics.

Created by Canadian duo Patrick Blendarn and Milton Lim, the game’s narrative involves a herd of donkeys who have been replaced, as workers, by machines, so many of them decide to confront their human overlords and push back against their (existential) obsolescence.

The first episode (of 10) introduces the main characters, named with an eye toward both humor and shorthand delineation (Nice Ass, Old Ass, Lazy Ass, Sad Ass, etc.). From the start, an audience member needs to stand the game’s controller, between the screen and the crowd, to advance the game. (Subsequent episodes were set in a mine, where the donkeys used to work, as well as a factory, a circus, an astral plane for donkeys, a nearby city, etc.) There was no shortage of volunteers, and after each person or pair took a turn completing tasks or gathering information—receiving occasional input/feedback from the audience along the way—they handed it off to the next person.

One of my first observations involved the people sitting around me: there were far more young men than I usually see at a UMS event; and while occasional, brief disagreements occurred throughout the day—which response to choose when we were given options, or whether a duo at the controls who were struggling to make it through a level should hand it off or push through themselves—the crowd consistently cheered each other on, working collaboratively to figure out the game’s various tasks, and applauding when a player progressed through a level.

Plus, each time we completed two episodes (roughly between 90 minutes and two hours), we had an intermission (“of indeterminate length”) to hit the bathroom and get some food. (Snacks included fruit and veggies, cheese crackers, Doritos, chips, and candy; dinner was lentil soup and samosas; dessert consisted of ice cream/sorbet options.) Eating snacks while hanging out with a room full of people engaged in a game that lasts for hours—well, it viscerally brought me back to my days living in East Quad in the early ‘90s, as did the game’s sly, winking nods to early video game hits like Pong and Frogger.

In adulthood, we don’t often allow ourselves such multi-hour indulgences, so for me, there was a time machine feel to asses.masses, too—a liberating sense that all that was being asked of me, all day long, was that I engage with this in-person community and its pretend mission.

This gets us back to the aforementioned community-building. It wasn’t lost on me that as we were helping the donkeys build a coalition, we were inevitably doing the same ourselves. Yes, when we had three options, and there was no clear consensus, the player at the controls had to make an individual judgment call. Generally, though, majority votes won out, and everyone stayed engaged, whether their choice won the day or not, all in hopes of achieving the big-picture goal.

In addition, the game’s circuitous journey, with its occasional detours into absurdity (donkey orgies and raves in the astral plain?) and boredom (workmanlike levels that tested our focus), reminded me that the process of establishing a collective, complex system is similar to crossing a minefield packed with such distractions and challenges. To make something epically ambitious happen, you have to ride through it all together.

And let’s face it: the donkeys’ challenge is our own. With AI changing the world at breakneck speed, and federal employees facing mass layoffs, we’re now staring down our own imminent obsolescence, leaving us with unnerving existential questions about the quintessential value of human thought and labor. Who will we be without work, or a larger purpose that drives us?

While asses.masses doesn’t really offer up answers, of course, it was an innovative, strange, fun, and compelling way to explore daunting questions, while also arguing the value of coming together as a community to work through disagreement and challenges.

I absolutely counted asses.masses as one more vote in favor of following my curiosity.

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.