The modder Kukielle has spent thousands of hours creating her own followers for the role-playing game Skyrim. The role-playing game from 2011 still has an average of 20,000 players on Steam, thanks in part to such an active modding community. However, Kukielle says enough is enough when it comes to working on mods. In a conversation with a gaming magazine, she expresses her frustration with the daily condescension she faces. The Skyrim community only takes but never gives back.
What mods is Kukielle known for? The modder Kukielle is known for designing her own followers for Skyrim that are advanced, have their own voice lines, and interact with the game:
Her most famous mod is called “Daegon and Kaesarius” (via nexusmod). This mod provides players with two followers who have over 6,000 voice lines and interact with each other. The mod has been downloaded 475,000 times.
Kaesarius is a sword-swinging, brooding mage-rogue. Daegon is described as a “pyromaniac witch.” Both followers are fantasy characters that fit certain tropes and fantasies, with Kukielle emphasizing that her mods are not sexually charged, although many people interpret them that way.
Additionally, she has released a follower named “Little Witch Taeka,” into which she has also invested thousands of hours.
Modder snaps after a comment and quits everything
What happened now? The modder posted a music video on the community page nexusmods and wrote that her debut album was out. However, the video received only 247 views in eight days, and the thread in the forum was largely ignored.
A post that finally responded said, “the mixtape is okay and all, but where is the new update for Taeka’s new mysterious boyfriend? The mod is fine, but it lacks the hot friends-with-benefits aspect of the other, bigger mods.
Kukielle apparently snapped: She had spent so much time giving Taeka more romantic content at the request of fans, which she never wanted to do, and is now fed up. She will do nothing more.
“The Skyrim community only takes and never gives back”
Kukielle explains that she has invested thousands of hours into the female companion Daegon to meet every request the fans had and has spent another thousand hours undoing everything and continuing to work on the character. But the people are never satisfied.
The Skyrim community takes and takes but never gives anything back. She has always complied and adjusted her work, and it has worn her out. It makes her sick every time she logs into Nexusmods.
Now she will do nothing at all.
Modder invests insane amounts of time into Skyrim – But it’s never enough for the people
This is what the modder says: The site Gamesradar spoke with the modder, who earns about $400 a month from her work through Patreon . She says:
I have spent thousands of hours developing my characters until they feel real in every situation they could find themselves in. They have been rebuilt from scratch multiple times, each time becoming more advanced, and they can do things that have never been done in a game before… I wanted a character with real personality that I could identify with. I wanted to have a best friend.
Modder believes she is seen as a “slutty sex kitten”
As one of the few women in an industry that is 99% male, I am constantly belittled and referred to as the “slutty sex kitten.” I have never created sexual content, but people talk about me as if I do […]
Gamesradar adds: Some of Kukielles mods are labeled as not safe for work on NexusMods, but the modder emphasizes that they are not explicitly sexual and that the warning is mainly due to the cursing.
She says she has invested many years of her life into work that does not fulfill her. Now she wants to make music to be remembered for something she truly enjoys.
When a hobby becomes an unpaid job
What’s behind this: It is cynical to look at it from the outside and comment coolly, but these are patterns seen in many things related to gaming, whether with content creators or in e-sports. When a hobby requires the same effort as a job, you devote so much time to the hobby, and you have to make so many compromises as for a job, it becomes a difficult and taxing situation.
Because with a job, there is a salary as recognition and the opportunity for career advancement. In a hobby, that reward is solely the feedback from the community and other people – and this feedback is, as we can see, fickle. Fans have their own perspectives and interests. They do not know how the artist is feeling and do not adjust their feedback accordingly.
There are nice stories, where someone from such a hobby with the support of sites like Patreon achieves a breakthrough and eventually gets a dream job. But for many, such hobbies that are pursued with the intensity of a job remain just hobbies that generate frustration.
Perhaps as a positive note: Apparently, after her outburst, Kukielle has gained some traction on Patreon, and her earnings there have increased by over $100 in the last few days.
We reported in 2022 about a user who intended to become a super source of news on Twitter and ultimately was very disappointed with how many used his service and how little they got back: Twitter loses the fastest source for gaming news, Nibel quits: “I don’t trust Musk”
