Die WASD

I used to love gaming magazines. Total!, MANIAC!, GEE—the physical ones you’d find in shops. Something about the weight of them, the care in the design, the knowledge that someone had decided what belonged in this issue and then it was finished. Most of that’s gone now. Blogs, YouTube, Twitter discourse took its place. Fine for speed, but not the same.

Die WASD is a German magazine that still exists. 200 pages, carefully made, serious about gaming without irony or exhaustion. Three people run it: Christian Schiffer, Ina Seidl, Markus Weißenhorn. Someone told me it’s the best gaming magazine in Germany, and I believe them because you can tell from the outside that it was made with actual thought, not just optimized for engagement.

There’s something valuable about a magazine as a complete object. It’s bounded, finished, designed as a whole instead of an infinite feed. You buy it and it doesn’t change or disappear. It doesn’t recommend you anything. It just sits there.

I haven’t read it, but the fact of it—a 200-page magazine about games, made with care, designed to last—that’s worth noticing.