Editress Leya provides a personal insight into the current direction of MeinMMO and looks back with the community on a tumultuous year.
Dear Meimos,
it’s currently hard for our editorial team to look at the calendar. On May 2, we commemorate the first anniversary of the death of our former editor-in-chief Schuhmann – and boy, we all still miss you very much!
We considered whether we should dedicate an article to him on this occasion. We know that his loss affected many of you as well. He would probably complain to me now for making a big deal out of it (secretly, he would have felt flattered nonetheless).
Therefore, we decided instead to revive a format that he initiated in his memory:
The “Greetings from the Editorial Team”.
Here we share with you what is currently on our minds and what is happening behind the scenes.
We think of Schuhmann and his work
In the one year since Schuhmann has been gone, quite a bit has changed for us. However, his aim to provide you with the best possible MeinMMO every day remains.
In this endeavor, we often think back to Schuhmann’s trainings and texts. We quote them again and again when it comes to “best practice.” When I find myself in a creative rut, I also like to smile through his texts and seek inspiration. At this point, we would like to present to you a few of his writings that have particularly stuck in our memory:
- After 1,400 hours in Crusader Kings 3, it bothers me when it is reduced to just one theme
- I spent 50 hours with a game on Steam in 4 days – No city-building game has affected me like this in 30 years
- Anyone who wants to play new MMORPGs must overcome their aversion to Asia
I would love to add 300 links here instead of just three. Instead, I will link you to Schuhmann’s author page in case you want to browse.
Even though we preserve Schuhmann’s legacy, we continue to evolve – and that is a perfect keyword for our new strategy.
We have revamped our content strategy with the new website
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, especially if you’ve been around since April. But we adjusted our content strategy along with the look of the website.
I brought you a slide from one of our internal PowerPoint presentations. With it, we launched our new strategy in early April, and it summarizes the direction well:
What does this mean for you now? In our ideal scenario, MeinMMO will now be even more exciting for you, as you will receive more unique texts.
The internet is undergoing a huge transformation due to AI, which naturally has a direct impact on our work. Whether we are seen and found still largely depends on the Google algorithm. As a free medium relying on mass reach and resulting advertising revenue, it has always been important for us to engage with the algorithm.
This remains important. However, we are currently experiencing the phenomenon that content is being harvested en masse by LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini and is being modified for further distribution. My esteemed colleague Heiko Klinge recently lamented on our sister site about how a German financial newspaper is flooding your Google News feed with AI Slop, misusing GameStar for it
But I actually see a huge advantage for us in this difficult environment. From my perspective, authentic content that is hard to replicate is regaining higher value. This means it has become even more important for us to showcase that there are real people here (Hello!) who still play and transform their experiences and knowledge into texts or videos.
We are therefore now focusing even more on reports, analyses, opinions, and interviews. News and stories from the community also continue to play an important role! We use AI for support, yes – for instance, to transcribe interviews more efficiently. Otherwise, the content is now more aligned with local journalism, which should be noticeable for you.
If you appreciate our work, the best way to support us is to directly visit MeinMMO and leave comments. We actually read them all and greatly value your participation! Thank you for that.
We have a new editor-in-chief
I still remember how Schuhmann approached me and suggested I get to know our new freelancer Lydia better. That was in 2022. He trained her at the time and said he could well imagine her taking on a strategic role with us one day.
I did just that and quickly recognized why Schuhmann wanted to plant that idea in my head. Lydia always showed a strong sense for storytelling from the beginning. She was always curious about why we wanted to pursue certain content strategies and asked many smart questions. She also always wanted to know how the site actually worked in the background. She quickly pushed back when she found a decision silly but always brought ideas on how to further improve the website and our articles.
It didn’t take long for me to offer her a permanent contract, always with the thought that she could become Schuhmann’s representative.
Even though we all would have preferred the circumstances to turn out differently: At this point, no one could fulfill Schuhmann’s legacy better than Lydia. Because that was the path we wanted to walk together from the very beginning. Lydia had already taken over his deputy role by then.
Now Lydia is our editor-in-chief and is taking care of our daily operations. This includes the daily content mix, immediate support for the editorial team, quality control, and monitoring our website.
Congratulations again on your promotion Lydia, you truly deserve it!
I would love to write a long paragraph about each individual person in the editorial team. But that would exceed the scope here. However, I recommend taking a look at our team overview if you want to get to know the editorial staff better.
Our YouTube channel is growing and thriving
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to our YouTube channel. For a little over a year, we’ve been dedicating much love to it. I will leave you a sample here and embed the latest video that revolves around our first experiences with Aion 2:
Phew, this letter has turned out to be a bit longer than I originally planned. But we haven’t reached out to you with an update in quite a while.
Finally, I would be interested in what content you would like to see more of from us? At the moment we are trying out a lot. It feels almost like we are completely rediscovering our website.
Feel free to write to us what you think!
Until then, I remain with best regards
Your Leya.
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