The German word "Bookazine" — half book, half magazine — sounds like a marketing gimmick until you hold a copy of WASD. Published from 2012 to 2021 by radio journalist Christian Schiffer and graphic designer Markus Weissenhorn out of their own Sea of Sundries Verlag in Munich, this semi-annual publication did something no German games magazine had done before: it treated video games as a legitimate subject for essays, reportage, and cultural criticism, without a single review score in sight.
Each of the eighteen issues centered on a theme — money and games, death and games, aesthetics and games — and assembled writers from across the German-speaking media landscape. Cultural scholar Christian Huberts, veteran games journalist Petra Fröhlich, FM4's Robert Glashüttner, and dozens of others contributed pieces that ranged from investigations into the energy consumption of German gaming to examinations of how poverty is depicted in virtual worlds. The writing was sharp, sometimes ironic, always accessible to readers who might not own a console but cared about culture.
The design was equally ambitious. Every text received its own bespoke layout, often paired with individually commissioned illustrations. That approach earned WASD something unprecedented for a German games publication: a Lead Award, a German Design Award, a European Design Award, a Red Dot, and an iF Design Award. No other games magazine in the German-speaking world had come close. The Süddeutsche Zeitung called its mission nothing less than establishing a games feuilleton.
The eighteenth and final print issue appeared in summer 2021. Schiffer and co-founder Jagoda Froer launched an online successor called WASTED, funded by crowdfunding, but it too shut down in March 2023 due to insufficient subscriber numbers. The arc is familiar — a brilliant niche publication that found its audience but not its business model. What remains is a body of work that proved, in eighteen beautifully designed volumes, that writing about games could be as rigorous and surprising as the best writing about film, literature, or music.
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