Mash X to Muse revolves around the virtual worlds of video games and tries to explore them from fresh angles – what they are made of, how they work, and why they matter. Games do not exist in a vacuum, which means that even the most fantastic game worlds emerge out of the background noise of our 'real' world and have been informed by the cultural and personal assumptions, preoccupations, beliefs and world views of their creators and the systems and structures around them.

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By tracing and exploring the cultural contexts and histories behind virtual worlds, the essays on this site treats them as meaningful microcosms which can tell us something about the ways humans make sense of the world and their place within it.