Money-Driven Fish Tank Game is a game I built and designed on the popular children’s platform, Roblox. I built the game on the Roblox platform after reading that, although mostly for children, strip clubs and sex clubs kept appearing, and the platform had to hire more moderators to get them deleted. This was a huge “scandal” for the platform. As much of my work investigates how sex work operates in the contemporary landscape, thematically and conceptually, Roblox was an interesting starting point for me.

In the game, the idea is to collect as much currency as possible (which the avatar can collect in the form of stacks of hundreds and green rectangles), avoid a giant shark that can kill you, avoid tiny cute fish that can kill you, listen to various characters that deliver extremely cliche and strange fables, and get through a difficult golden/damask maze to your home space. Also, if you make an account on Roblox, you are able to play it anytime and donate real money to me in-game, where your account name would show up as a forever dancing avatar man as a “TOP DONOR” The character often sits down, refusing to move until the player props her up with the X button. (She’s tired). The soundscape is a sped-up moody piano score, edited in with vintage-y game-y bubble sounds and fishbone sounds.