Killology, Royal Court

Computers have made violence into a game. Via a digital avatar, we can wrestle enemies, act as snipers or just career around cities stealing cars and shooting cops. Thanks to ever-improving graphics, blood spurts and bones break with vivid realism. But what are the implications and repercussions of gaming?

In new play Killology, writer Gary Owen creates a fictional world with striking similarities to our own.

A controversial new game has galvanised the public. It rewards players for the creativity with which they torture victims. The whole Killology gaming experience is, according to its rich creator, rooted in morality. There is, apparently, nothing unsavoury or disturbing about exacting depravities via a digital world. Instead, it's a harmless way of living out dark impulses.

But in the real world, the growing viciousness out on the streets tells a different story.

Gary Owen has a remarkable talent for interweaving political potency with humanity. He is a playwright who takes headline fodder and creates the kind of play that leave audiences with an altered understanding of the world beyond the theatre.

Violence and Son probed issues of domestic violence and consent; Iphigenia in Splott was a battle cry for Benefits Britain. Both delivered the their blow without any preachy moralising. Both plays sold out in London so we recommend booking fast to see what Gary Owen makes of the thorny debate surrounding gaming.

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