دانشگاه اصفهان مطالعات وقف و امور خیریه 3115-7475 4 1 2026 03 21 Redefining Charity in Casual Mobile Games: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Narratives of Suffering and Helping in Puzzle–Narrative Games بازتعریف نیکوکاری در بازی‌های موبایلی کژوال: تحلیل گفتمان انتقادی روایت رنج و کمک‌رسانی در بازی‌های پازل– روایتی 197 218 30699 10.22108/ecs.2026.149080.1193 FA فاطمه کمالی دانشجوی کارشناسی ارشد، گروه ارتباطات اجتماعی، دانشکدۀ علوم اجتماعی، دانشگاه تهران، تهران، ایران مهری بهار دانشیار، گروه ارتباطات اجتماعی، دانشکدۀ علوم اجتماعی، دانشگاه تهران، تهران، ایران 0000-0002-9674-6813 Journal Article 2026 05 30 Introduction Casual mobile games have become one of the most widespread forms of digital entertainment. Their accessibility, simple rules, short play sessions, and freemium business models have integrated them into users’ everyday media practices. These games, however, should not be regarded merely as entertainment products. Through narratives, visual representations, character design, dialogue, gameplay mechanics, and reward systems, they participate in constructing and normalizing particular understandings of social and moral concepts. A recurring narrative pattern in several puzzle–narrative games involves women, mothers, and children facing poverty, homelessness, cold weather, inadequate living conditions, or the breakdown of domestic and family life. Players are invited to assist these characters by completing puzzles, collecting resources, repairing houses, purchasing objects, redesigning spaces, or improving the characters’ appearance. At first glance, such narratives appear to promote empathy, generosity, and prosocial behavior. Nevertheless, the ways suffering is represented, the limited agency assigned to characters in need, the construction of the player as a rescuer, and the incorporation of helping into the economic and procedural logic of the game raise important critical questions. The central purpose of this study is to investigate how charity is redefined in casual puzzle–narrative mobile games and how suffering and helping are constructed through linguistic, visual, narrative, and interactive resources. The study also examines how these representations are shaped by broader social and economic structures and how the games simultaneously contribute to the reproduction of those structures. Methodology The study adopts a qualitative research design. The cases were purposively selected from casual mobile games available on Google Play. The selection criteria included the simultaneous presence of a puzzle–narrative structure, a freemium economic model, and explicit narratives of suffering, deprivation, rescue, or helping. Based on these criteria, three games were selected: Story Match, Pop Designer–Bubble Shooter, and Bubble Shooter Family. The research data consisted of screenshots, visual scenes, character dialogues, representations of bodies and domestic spaces, interactions between players and characters in need, before-and-after sequences of assistance, puzzle-solving mechanics, coin and resource systems, design and renovation choices, and reward structures. The units of analysis were narrative and interactive situations in which suffering was displayed, and the player was required to perform an act of assistance. The analysis was conducted in three stages. First, the linguistic, visual, and interactive features of the games were identified and examined in terms of their experiential, relational, and expressive values. Second, the communicative context and the relationships among the player, the suffering character, and the game system were interpreted. Third, the findings were explained in relation to broader economic, social, and cultural structures. To enhance analytical credibility, the linguistic, visual, narrative, and procedural dimensions of the games were examined together, and recurring patterns across the three games were compared with their distinctive features. Findings The findings at the descriptive level reveal that suffering is predominantly represented through material and domestic signs, including dilapidated houses, broken windows, cold environments, worn-out furniture, inadequate clothing, and sad facial expressions. Poverty is depicted not as a social or historical process, but as an immediate and visibly repairable condition tied to domestic disorder and disrupted family relations. At the experiential level, the games construct a strong binary opposition between undesirable and desirable conditions. Before intervention, settings are dark, cold, damaged, and disordered; after assistance, they become bright, warm, orderly, and aesthetically pleasing. Relationally, characters in need make direct emotional appeals to the player, while the player occupies a position of power to allocate resources and make decisions. Expressive values are reinforced through emotional vocabulary, self-blaming statements, and striking visual contrasts. At the interpretive level, the player–character relationship is markedly asymmetrical. Suffering characters lack agency and are positioned as passive recipients of help, while the player is constructed as a rescuer and crisis manager. The game system intermediates all acts of assistance, making help conditional upon completing puzzle levels, collecting coins, and earning rewards. Helping is therefore transformed from an autonomous ethical act into a conditional, sequential procedure in which moral achievement depends on ludic achievement, and charity is reduced to measurable indicators such as points, coins, and visible progress. Player agency is emphasized discursively but remains procedurally limited. At the explanatory level, these representations are closely linked to freemium economics and the attention economy. Suffering becomes a resource for sustaining user engagement, as emotional appeals and visible transformations create incentives for continued play. Furthermore, the games align with neoliberal discourses of individualized responsibility, as structural problems are reframed as personal domestic crises, and their resolution is assigned to the individual player rather than to collective institutions or public policy. Welfare systems and structural causes of poverty are notably absent from the narrative. The findings also reveal a feminization of suffering, with women and mothers disproportionately portrayed as vulnerable, dependent, and in need of rescue. Their difficulties are tied not only to material deprivation but also to perceived failures in fulfilling maternal roles and maintaining a stable home, thereby reproducing gendered stereotypes about female vulnerability and domestic responsibility. Discussion and Conclusion The findings demonstrate that the selected games redefine charity by transforming it from a collective, socially oriented practice into an individualized, sequential, measurable, and aestheticized intervention. Helping is largely reduced to repairing, renovating, decorating, and visually improving domestic environments. Its success is represented through rapid and visible transformations. Poverty, in turn, is converted into a manageable problem that can seemingly be resolved by spending resources and making appropriate consumer-oriented choices. The games are both shaped by and productive of broader social structures. Freemium logic turns suffering into an incentive for continued interaction; the attention economy employs emotional appeals to retain users; and neoliberal discourses of responsibility locate the solution to social problems in the actions of individual subjects. Charity therefore becomes platformized: it is organized according to game rules, reward systems, progress indicators, restricted choices, and market-oriented mechanisms. The contribution of this study lies in connecting digital game studies, humanitarian communication, and critical discourse analysis. It highlights the importance of examining not only what games narrate but also how their mechanics and economic models organize moral action. The findings suggest that game designers should provide greater agency to characters represented as vulnerable, avoid gendered stereotypes, acknowledge the structural dimensions of suffering, and develop more collective and participatory representations of helping. The study is limited by its focus on three mobile games and by the absence of audience reception and production-based data. Future studies may investigate how players interpret these narratives, how developers conceptualize suffering and prosocial action, and how representations of charity differ across cultural contexts, platforms, and game genres. Such research could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships among digital play, empathy, suffering, and charitable action. پژوهش حاضر با هدف بررسی چگونگی بازتعریف نیکوکاری و بازنمایی رنج در بازی‌های موبایلی کژوال انجام شده است. پژوهش از نظر رویکرد، کیفی است و با استفاده از تحلیل گفتمان انتقادی چندوجهی و بر پایۀ الگوی سه‌بُعدی فرکلاف، سه بازی استوری مچ، پاپ دیزاینر ـ بابل شوتر و بابل شوتر فمیلی را بررسی می‌کند. داده‌های پژوهش شامل دیالوگ‌ها، تصاویر، شخصیت‌ها، ساختار روایت، مکانیک‌های گیم‌پلی، نظام پاداش و الگوی اقتصادی بازی‌ها هستند. یافته‌ها نشان داد در سطح توصیف، رنج عمدتاً از طریق نشانه‌های مادی و خانگی، مانند خانۀ مخروبه، سرما، کمبود امکانات و آسیب‌پذیری زنان و کودکان بازنمایی می‌شود. در سطح تفسیر، بازیکن در جایگاه نجات‌دهنده و مدیر بحران و شخصیت نیازمند در موقعیتی وابسته و کم‌عاملیت قرار می‌گیرد؛ همچنین، کمک‌رسانی در بازی به حل پازل و انتخاب‌های مصرفی تقلیل داده می‌شود. در سطح تبیین، منطق فریمیوم، اقتصاد توجه و گفتمان نئولیبرالی مسئولیت، زمینۀ شکل‌گیری این بازنمایی را فراهم می‌کنند و بازی‌ها نیز با فردی‌سازی مسئولیت، زنانه‌سازی رنج و کالایی‌سازی فقر، این ساختارها را بازتولید می‌کنند. در نتیجه، نیکوکاری از کنشی جمعی و معطوف به تغییر اجتماعی، به مداخله‌ای فردی، مرحله‌ای، زیبایی‌شناختی و سازگار با منطق بازار تبدیل می‌شود.

https://ecs.ui.ac.ir/article_30699_9a8c73d76eddc26f5091a3dfc99a06ae.pdf