Carly swung her hammer and crushed the heretic's skull.

For context, she was playing a video game. In real life, Carly could barely swing the smallest of claw hammers, but in the virtual world she crushed a heretic's skull with the power of her thunder hammer.

Her character swung in a downwards arc. Her avatar swinging a steel hammer, with a two grip handle the length of her body, a hammer wreathed in lightning, to break bone passing by rotting flesh decaying under the malevolent influence of a god. The flat of her blunt instrument connected with the skull.

In the blink of an eye, and following through she squished the head and neck into the body of the heretic. Without a head there were only shoulders, knees and toes to sing about.

In the large halls of this grimdark world, her character made some zealous comment about sending skulls for a golden throne. It didn’t make much sense to Carly. However, the quality of the voice actor’s deliverance impressed on her the epicness and brutality of the virtual battle.

She rushed through the space for her next victim. She sprinted through some kind of church to a god (who denies their godhood), different from the god of decay, and who is also ruling over all of humanity, but he is also a corpse and has been for thousands of years.

She could also have been in a factory.

It was hard to tell because the buildings in this game make St Paul’s Cathedral look miniscule and everything had mechanical industrial looking tubes and floating cybernic skulls. There was a lot of gold plating, so she guessed church…maybe.

They passed through the church and into a series of labyrinthian corridors. Where there was once grand, empty space, now the hordes of enemies poured in from behind, above and charging from the front. The enemy, swinging their patchup, rusting metal clubs, leering out with devouring mouths to swallow and feast on their meat in some kind of cannibalistic banquet.

She fought the hordes of chaos with allies who in the story were former soldiers, big hulk-like mutants and mad space wizards. In real life they could be anyone. In the game, she bathed in the golden flames of her divine thrown grenade that burned her without harm, she felt like a superhero from the comics book movies.

The divine flames cooled and faded away. A screaming club wielding zombie-like heretic rushed to kill Carly’s character: a priest to the not a god, dead emperor guy. All around her the space wizard fired lightning, the mutant charged forth and the soldier fired laser rounds.

Again, Carly swung her hammer and crushed a heretic’s skull.

There is this idea that violence in games causes violence in real life. Somehow what symbols you see in the virtual breeds aggression that is unleashed in the physical world. This theory has not been proven. No study that has attempted to prove this theory has done so. As far as we are aware, violence in video games does not cause violence in real life.

Deeper reflection would lead to the thought that the dominance of violence in games reflect, in part, the honouring of violence in real life. It is rather the culture we create in real life that shapes what we make and play in the virtual.

Just like how going boxing won’t reduce violence so violent video games don’t reduce violence. Any aggression remains the same before the hobby. However, if you are spending your time grinding fortnite then you aren’t punching people in the stomach. Though, a person can do both. Mostly, video games like all other hobbies distract people and create pleasure.

But even if it was the case that video games triggered violence like how when a popular football team loses rates in domestic violence jump, who would blame the game of football? No one I've ever met. Football is a fun sport that can be played safely. How does it not make more sense to blame the cultures and values that suggest husbands are right to beat their wives? Vice versa as well.

What is the point of this rambling preamble? Carly enjoys zombie horde games like the classic Left4Dead2. She spent her school years zombie apocalypse prepping to ease the mind-numbing boredom of most of her classes. When you are quiet as silence what else was she supposed to do?

She does not go about depreciating… (I mean decapitating, but also she does appreciate) real life people.

In the 40th millennium, there is only war. The victim’s of Carly’s zealous wrath in the name of the God Throne are heretics of despair, decay and disease.

When did the violence end? Well that is the fun fact of fighting billions of heretics. It doesn’t. In the game, at least, Carly had already finished one mission and now on her second blinked away drowsy sleep.

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The frenetic pace of the four of them slaughtering their way through this planet in moral descent did not lend itself to induce sleep. You would think, but as any parent can attest to, repetitive exciting playing does eventually send the child to sleep. However hard they resist it.

Carly did not want to resist Hypnos' song.

She would not abandon the team during the game. Bad etiquette. When everyone is here for fun she did not want to be the one to ruin it because she felt a little tired. Play is a kind of work if you think of work as effort and fatigue. A great kind of work for it produced satisfaction and led to fun experience.

As she switched to her shotgun and killed three of those digital pixels she did crack a half smile. She fired again and again into the incoming horde until her clip empted. Her character animated the reload. Before a single claw could scratch her armour, she dashed back and drew her thunder hammer.

Carly swung her hammer and crushed the heretic's skull.

Violence does not have much meaning by itself. Much the same might be said about war. For violence, it seemed as variable as water. Life-giving, life-destroying, powerful, weak and so on. How similar is virtual violence against a programme to street alley knifing?

More comparable, how similar is a martial art tournament of a fighting game to a UFC tournament or kids martial arts tournament?

No one who has experienced the horrors of war either could say it is good. Many who have experienced anti-war art could say war is not good. War involves violence and it is the suffering violence causes that makes war horrible.

But if violence doesn’t cause suffering is it bad? If aggression doesn’t cause suffering is it harmful?

Carly thought not. She felt a sort of active relaxation from playing this video game. Not quite soaking in a soapy bath relaxation, but her brain engaged without the great stress coming from her work that stretching her thin like butter on toast spread too much.

She would not go so far as to say her life was better for this violent video game. It did help her manage and cope with her life. As a distraction well there were worse things she could be doing. There were some benefits to this play of violence.

Did serial killers think the same? If they did, were their contexts different (that of killing people and of killing a code generated symbol) enough that the similar thoughts did not make her evil?

Further, even if the violence was okay because no one was harmed, what about her lack of productivity? This game carried no great meaning for her, and it didn’t increase any kind of ‘value’ she had. It wasn’t even spiritual meditation. She just played a game.

Was she harming herself by playing the game?

Did Carly’s smart sister reading of the Odyssey make her violent? No. It was no proof of self harm either. It describes and shows violence. The difference is technology where the story was spoken and now read is different to where video games are audio-visual media. How does that difference make one morally or lead to major health differences when engaging with them? That would be silly. It does indicate that violence was near as common and significant to us as it was to those Ancient Greeks.

Shoulder’s at her ears and eyes screwed up all the way at the temples, Carly was forced to admit she was no longer relaxing. Anxiety, doubt and being. Not even the over saturation of the violent video game experience held her attention and directed it away from her self.

Still, at least the future 40000 years from now is worse than her life. The grim violence of it all was comforting, if not healing.

She took a breath and felt it from nose to belly and back again. She rode the wave and kept playing.

They descended into the pit, sort of like a gas chamber, where two twin captains awaited. A circular gladiatorial arena made of steel and built in the underhive far down in the subterranean depths of the hive city hosting billions of bodies; dead and alive. The twins towered over Carly’s group of four ragtag outcasts and the Twins were backup by hordes of enemies.

The twins, eating the flesh of their own allies, tossed the bodies from their feasting mouths, and readied to defend themselves. The female twin drew her large power sword and the male twin aimed his plasma pistol at the space wizard.

Carly threw her divine grenade, too quickly, at the Twins and into the mass of the incoming horde. The holy flames burned away at their health and incrirate the weaklings into dust while whittling away at the health bars of the Twins forcing them to pop up their shields for a reprieve from the damage.

The female twin swung her orange sword in great arcs tanked by Carly’s mutant ally. The hulking, friendly avatar absorbed the damage while blasting scorching flames into the boss from his flamethrower.

Carly focused on the mobs and giving passive heals to her group. The soldier and the mutant could deal the most damage to the twins, while she and the space wizard gave them breathing room.

The first twin fell to the soldier's headshot.

For the second, Carly swung her hammer and killed the last of the twins. Sadly, the skull crushing animation wasn’t a feature for the Twin boss characters.

It wasn’t the same, clicking a button or a trigger and killing some pixels, not compared to punching someone in the face and the adrenaline is spiking so hard you don’t feel the contact and the proof of your attacking in self defence is you sight, she saw him, the drunken fool on the ground who was trying to assault you. She walked away, never turning her back to him until she was safely at a distance and then she bolted for home.

Regret is an interesting thing, sometimes you regret not hurting someone more. Sometimes, playing a violent video game ain’t that complicated with a dark backstory and is just about relaxing. A cheap imitation of a far more delightful, terrible act driven by survival instincts borne of evolution millions of years ago. Survival instincts kept species alive, and ruin onto individuals and groups.

The violence was just an interaction. Violence in this case was an interaction in the game. The game, the playing, the cooperating with others, to deal with some minor obstacles that required basic skills. All of it was leisure. A leisure she could afford and a quality of experience she enjoyed. She wanted to play.

Between escape and their group was a last swarm of enemies. They rammed their way through sprinting all the way, rushing towards the gunship to escape. Until there was one last enemy.

Carly swung her hammer and crushed the heretic's skull.

They entered the gunship and won the level.