Playing With Empowerment

Though it is not the first online game created for use in the international development industry, the Half the Sky Movement: The Game (TG)—based on the New York Times bestseller “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” by Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn—claims to be the first to translate virtual play directly into real-world action. It is also the first to specifically target female players. And the first to focus solely on gendered issues of development. The game, which has generated extensive attention from mainstream media, celebrity figures, and Facebook users, aims to teach players about the issues facing women and girls around the globe and get them on board with the movement, its nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners, and their preferred projects. If digital impressions, downloads, and donations are any indication, it has seen success.

Indeed, by using the world’s most popular social media platform, the Half the Sky Movement (HTSM)—a multidonor, multimedia initiative that seeks to “ignite the change needed to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide” (Half the Sky, n.d.)—has found an innovative way to promote a very specific approach to development—one in line with a dominant neoliberal agenda, widely critiqued by gender and development scholars—directly to millions of people online. Further, it has convinced individual women to use their leisure time to carry out the work necessary for such a project and to invite other women to join with them in doing so. This study uses an approach that brings together ideological criticism, critical discourse analysis, and critical game studies to analyze the Facebook-based TG as an individual text, situated within the broader international development discourse. In doing so, it brings into focus not only the development narratives and values embedded in the game but also the way in which female players are targeted, through the creation of a gendered digital space, in an effort to convince individual women to carry out the work of neoliberal development.

Understanding how digital immaterial labor operates within and supports a capitalist system by reproducing important social roles and normative behaviors is integral to understanding the implications of using video games as tools for carrying out international development. By creating a gendered digital space that appeals specifically to female game players, the task of development is presented as a new form of unpaid “women’s work” in which individual women are given the responsibility of developing and empowering the “Third World Woman.” Further, it is assumed that the best way to carry out this work is via immaterial tasks (liking the Facebook page, playing the game, and inviting friends), in addition to direct material support (donations to the organization and in-game purchases). TG actively brings players into a project based on a neoliberal understanding of women’s empowerment and progress, asking them to rhetorically and materially support and spread the ideology of individual, economic development, conceptualized by the HTSM as the best path forward.

Literature Review

Discourse, Development, and Digital Games

While the Facebook and mobile phone games created by the HTSM have been some of the most publicized, they are not the only development-oriented game project taken up in recent years (Fisher, 2016). And the development industry is certainly not the only industry interested in using Serious Games (SG): Over the last decade, SG have been integrated into a variety of industries, including military, government, education, corporate, and healthcare, and it is estimated that by 2020, the SG industry will be worth $5.4 billion. For the HTSM, whose funders and partners include major technology corporations (e.g., Intel) and commercial gaming companies (e.g., Zynga) participating in the growth of such an industry is inherently valuable. For development-focused organizations, games present an exciting and innovative avenue for fund and awareness raising, as well as for carrying out on-the-ground educational and behavior change projects (Fisher, 2016). TG, much like the first-ever development-oriented game Food Force, released by the United Nations World Food Programme in 2005, is part of a category of games designed specifically to teach those in the Global North about development: What the issues are, how they should be addressed, and who should be responsible for such work (Fisher, 2016). Additionally, TG asks individuals to participate in the actual work of development via the labor of playing the game (which unlocks sponsored donations including books, fistula surgeries, and financial support) and through virtual-to-real-life translation (i.e., in-game donations).

Communication plays two important roles in the development process: Communication for development, which includes the communication technologies and processes used to actually do development, and communication about development, which actively shapes how development is conceptualized and works to generate support for certain ways of doing it (Escobar, 1984; Wilkins, 1999; Wilkins & Mody, 2001). Both are important to how the development industry operates. Working as both a text and a direct portal for “action” (via monetary support to specific organizations), TG does both: Through the story lines and procedural rhetoric of the game, it presents a commentary about development, framing for players its problems and pathways, and it is a tool used to carry out the work deemed necessary to achieve the project’s goals.

As a text, TG works within a broader industry and cultural discourse to frame our understanding of the development field both in terms of the pertinent issues that should be addressed and the possible or best solutions to them (Arce, 2003). This framing has important implications for the types of development projects carried out, the types of policies supported, and the kinds of solutions that gain acceptance (Cornwall, Harrison, & Whitehead, 2007; Hajer, 1995). As Cornwall et al. argue (2007), “The struggles for interpretive power are not struggles to get the language and representations right for their own sake, but because they are a critical part in the determination of policy.” (p. 17).

But, development-oriented games must also be understood as material products produced within a specific sociohistorical and economic context, with implications beyond narrative representation (Fernandez-Vara, 2015). Such an approach is in line with Flanagan’s (2006) understanding of the process of game design, which, she argues, includes, but goes beyond, the direct design of the game itself. In her view, game design “is presented as a wide category: design of company structures, the design of a technology or software architecture, collaborations, or the design of any kind of planned construction of computer-based artifacts” (Flanagan, 2006, p. 495). Thus, games must be understood as both individual, meaningful texts and as artifacts of a political economic system.

It is not surprising that the international development industry has shown interest in using digital games as educational and behavior change tools, given its long history of using mass communication technologies in its attempts to disseminate messages, expose people to new ideas, and facilitate behavior change (Lerner, 1958; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Rao, 1963; Rogers, 1962; Schramm, 1964; Singhal & Rogers, 1999). And, using a game to deliver development messages is especially pertinent, given the popularity of edutainment projects, which work to embed educational messages in entertainment media such as tele-novelas (Singhal & Rogers, 1999). However, edutainment practices have generally been aimed at those in need of development, with messages on how individuals can “live safer, healthier, and happier lives” (Singhal & Rogers, 2001, p. 343). While some games created in the last decade have taken a more traditional edutainment approach (a strong example is the suite of three mobile phone games created by the HTSM as on-the-ground development tools for use in India and Kenya), TG uses these principles to target a different audience: potential developers or development supporters in the Global North.

Mediated content is used to teach Western audiences about development both directly, via targeted fundraising campaign material, and indirectly, via entertainment vehicles such as novels, movies, and so on (Lewis, Rodgers, & Woolcock, 2014). The ways in which development issues and solutions are framed within this mediated discourse have significant implications for how development is carried out. For instance, the rise of celebrity advocacy, causumerism and clicktivism (e.g., Bono’s global [RED] campaign), has led to an emphasis on compassionate consumption and capitalist solutions to development problems. Though popular with Western audiences, critical scholars argue such an approach works to not only erase but to in fact recreate and reproduce the productive forces behind global inequality (Cameron & Haanstra, 2008;Choudry & Kapoor, 2013; Wilkins & Enghel, 2013).

Development games created for audiences in the West create a new form of edutainment, one that works not only to teach audiences what development is and how it should be accomplished but also directly engages players with that specific form of development within the mediated space. Thus, understanding the type of development TG seeks to engage players with is important, as it has the potential to impact public support (ideologically and materially) for certain types of development over others.

Further, it is necessary to consider the political economic implications of the production of SG, of which development-oriented games are part, especially as smaller game developers emerge in the market. The current power imbalance behind the production and distribution of SG, in which North America generally and the United States specifically dominates, could produce problems similar to those in earlier ICT-based development projects if left unchecked. Such issues include the continuation of top-down information structures, the reproduction of gender biases that entrench existing social issues, the reinforcement of “knowledge monopolies” that privilege western ways of knowing, and the erasure of important local contexts and needs (Kwami, Wolf-Monteiro, & Steeves, 2011).

The globalized media industry, with its imbalanced flows of product and power, creates “new configurations of power” and produces “new subject positions, new forms of oppression (and resistance), and new instruments of power/knowledge … that cut across political, national and racial boundaries in unexpected ways” (Shome & Hegde, 2002, p. 176). Digital games, considered “the media of Empire” in the 21st century, are especially good sites for reproducing and cementing global power divides as digital gameplay often works in favor of global hypercapitalism as it “trains flexible personalities for flexible jobs, shapes subjects for militarized markets, and makes becoming a neoliberal subject fun” (Dyer-Witheford & De Peuter, 2009, pp. xxix–xxx).

But, as game enthusiasts and some critical scholars point out, games also offer the possibility for alternatives to, or ways out of, current systems and structures—of learning, of working, and of development. Thus, digital games are certainly worthy of our attention as they have the potential to “shape work, learning, health care and more,” including the field of international development (Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2014, p. 3). The following section looks at the ways in which women have been conceptualized in international development in order to situate the narrative of TG within the broader historical discourse.

Women as the Ultimate “Untapped Resource”

The HTSM focuses specifically on issues facing women and girls around the globe. To understand the implications of the ways in which women and the concept of women’s empowerment is framed in TG, it is necessary to consider historical and contemporary approaches to women and gender in the development industry. The early goal of international development was national economic growth and because men were seen as the productive members of society the resources and benefits of development were directed toward them (Kabeer, 1994; McEwan, 2009; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Singh, 2007). It was not until the United Nations Decade for Women and the subsequent Women in Development (WID) movement of the 1970s that serious attention was given to the role of women (Connelly, Murray-LI, MacDonald, & Parpart, 2002; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Moser, 1989). The main arguments of the WID movement, which fought for the inclusion of women’s issues within a mainstream development framework, were based on ideas of efficiency: Development resources should be directed toward women because of the economic returns their inclusion could bring (Kabeer, 1994; Razavi & Miller, 1995). If given access to technology, credit, and income-generating skills, it was assumed women’s economic productivity would benefit development at both local and national levels (Razavi & Miller, 1995).

But critics of WID argued the approach isolated women as a categorical group from the rest of their lives, ignoring the relationships, structures, and systems through which women’s inequalities are reproduced (Kabeer, 1994). By merely bringing women into the existing system, without addressing the structures of power established within it, WID failed to address the real problems women face and did little to support the redistribution of power necessary to achieve gender equity (Kabeer, 1994; Moser, 1989).

Women and gender and gender and development (GAD) approaches, responses to WID, critique the global structural inequalities at play in the lives of poor women in the developing world, as well as the inherent biases toward men established in the development industry itself (Elson, 1995; Kabeer, 1994; Razavi & Miller, 1995). These approaches highlight poverty and women’s oppression as products of larger structural inequalities at the local level and as by-products of global economic power structures (Kabeer, 1994). They argue that the integration of women into the current development field, without challenging existing power structures, is itself problematic.

There has never been only one theory of development. Nevertheless, certain theories and ideologies, backed by more powerful voices, dominate at different moments in time. The sweeping changes in economic policies of the 1980s brought neoliberalism, with its focus on open markets and free trade, into many arenas, including that of international development. As a development ideology, neoliberalism has had tremendous staying power and its dominance has implications not only for the field but, more importantly, for the lives of women in the Global South. A series of gender-focused policies, dubbed the New Policy Agenda, built on neoliberal economics and liberal democratic theory, helped construct a development discourse that emphasized the incorporation of poor women in the developing world into the global market (Alvarez, 1999). This approach saw self-help projects, microcredit loans, and small businesses as the best path forward. Though the many negative impacts of globalization, free trade agreements, and microcredit loans on the lives of poor women have been well documented, a neoliberal approach that frames women as an “untapped resource” (see, e.g., The Girl Effect) continues to dominant mainstream discourse (Aguilar & Lacsamana, 2004; Karim, 2008, 2011). Harnessing this resource is presented as key to solving a variety of development issues, including population control, food crisis, environmental degradation, and so on.

This framework presents women as responsible for their own development, as well as the development of those around them (Karim, 2011). In this context, women are expected to take the necessary actions to achieve development in spite of the societal and material obstacles they may face (Brown, 2003). As Brown (2003) argues, “The model neo-liberal citizen is one who strategizes for her/himself among various social, political and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these options” (p. 15). Such an approach invites women in the developing world into the global marketplace, positing that the solution to development lies within the current economic system, rather than questioning the role of capitalism and globalization in further burdening women in the developing world and creating new sources of oppression and inequality (Aguilar & Lacsamana, 2004; Pearson, 2007). It does not question what an alternative system might look like. Women’s inequality, instead of becoming a challenge to a system that is inherently asymmetrical, is depoliticized and used to promote new market subjects (Elson, 1995; Karim, 2011).

Through the creation of development-oriented games like TG, organizations are adding a new text to the discourse about development—framing for players how development should be carried out, on whom it should focus, and what the end goal should look like. From a game studies perspective, video games are a perfect tool for generating and distributing such a message (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006). In creating the software for games, producers, designers, and so on construct realities for players, filled with the value systems, worldviews, and norms of the designer, whether embedded in the games intentionally or not (Flanagan, 2006). Embedding ideologies in games works well as players are called on to take them up via the specific subject positions constructed through virtual play. These virtual subject positions create a subtle, “more flexible order where users of their own initiative adopt the identities required by the system” (Dyer-Witheford & De Peuter, 2009, p. 193).

TG is also a new tool for doing development, allowing players to directly support organizations and projects both rhetorically and materially. The unpaid, immaterial labor of actors in a digital space, while often not implicitly economic, actively works to maintain a broader neoliberal market system and its values, norms, and behaviors (Jarrett, 2014). A feminist analysis of digital work and participation is integral, then, to understanding how nonproductive labor in digital spaces supports, reproduces, and creates social, cultural, and symbolic implications in both digital and off-line societies (Jarrett, 2014; Terranova, 2003). This study works to understand how the digital labor of TG gameplay supports and facilitates neoliberal development.

Within TG, it is women who are explicitly called upon to carry out this work. Jarrett (2014) points to the mundane practices of posting Facebook updates, liking pictures, leaving reviews, and so on, as similar to nondigital women’s work in the immaterial sphere (such as socialization, communication, education, care, etc.) in terms of their ability to generate and maintain social stability, social relationships, and the “intellectual and creative commons” that connect users (p. 19). As examined in the following section, TG creates an explicitly gendered space that targets women, asking them to take on the “innocuous interpersonal activity” of Facebook (e.g., “liking” a post and sharing information) that “linked to all the other moments where subjectivities inherent to the capitalist system are rewarded and celebrated … becomes part of a powerful disciplining machinery specific to this historical moment” (Jarrett, 2014, p. 24). This study highlights how TG draws upon this digital, gendered work to reinforce, reproduce, and enact a neoliberal approach to development, in which women in the Global North are called on to set free the untapped resource of women in the Global South.

Discussion

Join the global movement to empower women and girls … Play a groundbreaking game and make a real-world impact.–The Half the Sky Movement: The Game Trailer

TG launched in March 2013. After 4 months, TG, the first Facebook game with virtual-to-real-life translation and in-game donations, reached one million players. Mainstream media called video games the new frontier for activism and social change (Sydell, 2013), and Ken Weber (2014), the executive director of Zynga, declared that social good games would soon be an industry staple.

TG, like predecessors Food Force (UN, 2005) and Darfur is Dying (MTV, 2006), aims to bring development-related issues to a mainstream audience. It was created after Kristof approached the nonprofit Games for Change about creating something to “reach beyond the converted”—that is, the New York Times reading, PBS watching, nonfiction book consumers who were already familiar with the mission of Half the Sky (Burak, 2013). The game was designed specifically to introduce players in the West to the issues and solutions taken up by the HTSM through a series of (mainly) female characters who must negotiate difficult situations brought about by poverty and gender inequality. It asks players to “recruit more people into this global movement” as they take characters on “a journey from oppression to opportunity” (Half the Sky Trailer, 2013). But the ultimate goal is to convince players to engage in a specific brand of digital activism: “We wanted to reach the widest audience possible, but turn a small percentage into real activists, into hardcore activists that would really make a difference in the real world by donating money” (Gamification Co, 2013).

Games for Change chose Facebook as the platform for TG based on player demographics and community building potential (Burak, 2013). Social media game players are predominately women in their 30 s, 40 s, and 50 s—a demographic the HTSM specifically hoped to target (YouTube, 2014). This, along with the ability to invite friends to join the game, and the possibility for in-game donations, gave weight to their decision to create a social game in this particular digital space. Asi Burak, president of Games for Change during the TG project, notes that they wanted to get players to be “digitally involved,” to “get them to do some things in the digital world that are taking them from a player to an activist” (G4C13, 2014). Facebook provided the necessary mechanisms and an audience in line with the one the HTSM was looking for.

Women, it seems, are attracted to short, casual games that involve an active community such as FarmVille, Café Wars, or Pet Society (emarketer, 2010). Further, women spend more time on social networks in general, so their strong presence on social media-based games is logical (emarketer, 2010). In keeping with the older demographic of Facebook—the primary platform for 83% of social game players—the average age of social game players in the United States is 48 (Ingram, 2010). While women have been the dominant demographic in the casual gaming industry since its beginnings, the divide between male and female players has grown as social media games continue to generate popularity with so-called middle-aged, female players (Morrision, 2010). In the case of the TG, the audience was overwhelmingly female: 80% of HTSMG players were female, and the top playing country was the United States (Gamification Co, 2013).

The HTSM worked to further feminize the casual game space by filling the Facebook page and game with female characters illustrated in a distinctly cartoonish, childlike way. Of the 55 images posted by the organization that have people (real or animated) in them, only 6 contain an obviously male subject. Besides one picture of two American actresses, the images are of real women working in fields, holding a goat, holding babies, or in a classroom; or they are animated pictures of the female characters from the game holding a goat, with children (four of which appear to be young males), or standing together in a group.

The five female characters from the game are dressed in clothing coded with explicit signifiers of gender and nationality. The character from India wears a bright orange and pink sari; the woman from Vietnam wears a conical hat; the woman from Afghanistan wears a purple burka; the woman from Kenya, perhaps most surprisingly, is shown in a nurse’s white dress and stethoscope; and the woman from the United States wears a mini skirt and boots. The text in the game’s logo appears to be hand drawn with chalk; the words “The Game” are featured in a floating squiggly cloud. Submissions from the coloring contest for a character's outfit along with weekly “Fact Friday” posts containing information on issues facing women worldwide fill the timeline. A “Happy Mother’s Day!” message shows a character and her two children happily together under a shining sun. Visually, all of these images work to gender the game and page space. The women shown are the objects of this development project, and the viewer or player is targeted as an actor in the project based on her gender.

The game begins in India, where the player is introduced to the main character Radhika. As the player progresses through the game, Radhika travels from her home to Kenya, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the United States, where she is introduced to new women and the issues they face. In each location, Radhika is tasked with helping her new friends to address a particular issue. She cannot travel forward in the game until she has “unlocked” the next location. This is done via a complicated series of factors, including play-time and wait-time, task completion, in-game donations, and in-game purchases. After a minimal amount of play, players must either pay (via an in-game purchase) or wait 24 hours before continuing. The player has to complete various tasks—some involve built in mini games, which mimic casual games like Candy Crush, asking players to connect a row of similar game pieces together; others involve narrative choices that determine the actions of characters in the game—before being able to move forward in the game. Based on my own experience, I found that, regardless of wait-time between sessions, it was often necessary to make in-game purchases (e.g., paying $2.00–$5.00 to buy energy points) to continue. Thus, while the game appears to be free to play, only the first chapter truly is.

The player moves throughout the game’s chapters by navigating a cartoon map. The first map depicts a rural area in India with small huts, a school, a hospital, trees, and an airport—the “gateway to the world.” The game begins with an introduction to Radhika, the main character. The player quickly learns that Radhika is unable to afford medicine for her sick child and needs to find a way to earn money. As the player takes Radhika on her “journey from oppression to opportunity,” she encounters a development narrative of self-help and economic empowerment. Radhika must find ways to earn money and support herself, whether by selling mangoes in the market, applying for a microcredit loan, buying a goat, or starting a small business selling the goat’s milk. The player sees Radhika pursue noneconomic activities as she works on her reading skills with her children, volunteers at a local clinic, and joins a women’s empowerment group. But the emphasis in the first chapter is on securing a loan and starting a small business.

For instance, even though the women in the empowerment group say they value the precious time they have together, it becomes clear that the purpose of the group is to bring together enough women to secure a loan, which Radhika will later use to grow her goat milk business and to add a room onto her house. Once Radhika has helped herself, she is able to work to bring up other women in her community and beyond. She helps a young woman, Malika, avoid early marriage by convincing her to join the empowerment group. At her first meeting, Malika is told to gather seeds from the forest that she can sell for money. Radhika then gives her a gift of money, which Malika uses to take computer classes so she can better track inventory and customers. Malika’s financial contribution to the family does not go unnoticed, and it is clear her financial gain has given her some decision-making power as her mother postpones her wedding.

Radhika eventually leaves India in order to help women globally. In Kenya, she helps a group of nurses decide if they will sell mosquito nets or give them away for free; and she organizes a community discussion on gender after a local football match. In Vietnam, she helps to buy back a young woman forced into sex trafficking. In Afghanistan, she supports a women-run newspaper and an election on women’s rights. Finally, she learns about sex trafficking in the United States and the global network of trafficked girls. Along the way, Radhika decides to run for local election in her hometown, which she wins. Because of her good work, she is asked to speak at the United Nations, where she discusses the importance of supporting girls.

By the last two chapters of the game, Radhika has moved from routinely employing economic solutions to taking a political stance to enact broader change. However, the examples of cultural or political change solutions (e.g., hosting a community discussion around family planning and birth control in Kenya and having a vote on women’s right to own property in Afghanistan) often prove ineffective: Radhika is run out of town in the first, and the vote fails in the latter. Only the solutions based on individual economic empowerment (e.g., microloans and small businesses) or nonfinancial material solutions (e.g., mosquito nets and building a health clinic) prove consistently successful.

Although the importance of political organizing is presented to players through Radhika’s successful run for office, the only outcome of her achievement comes in the form of speeches–one on the importance of microlending practices, the other, at the United Nations, on her own story of changing her life through hard work. Further, Radhika’s political power is predicated on her own economic empowerment: that first microloan was the catalyst for all that has come after it, and because of it, she plans to use her role in politics to support more microcredit programs. Finally, it is through economic (convincing other women to get a loan, going into business with them, and selling a goat to them), not political, solutions that she is able to most successfully help other women around her. While Radhika participates in a variety of activities, some of which bring groups of women together to fight for change in nuanced ways, the moments of actual change in the game–when the female players successfully transition from oppression to opportunity—are all predicated on financial gain. But money does not merely drive the story line forward, it drives the gameplay itself: without making a financial contribution (via an in-game donation or purchase), it becomes impossible to continue to play.

Players activate the development process by unlocking sponsored donations, making personal donations to the game’s nonprofit partners, and extending the network of developers by inviting friends to play along. Throughout the game, players are asked to participate in what game developer Frima refers to as virtual-to-real-life translation by purchasing a good or service, identical to the one that has just been used in the game, through one of the seven nonprofit partners. For instance, after Radhika prospers from buying a goat and selling its milk, the player is asked to help a woman in real life by purchasing a goat through Heifer International.

Players are able to “empower” women in the Global South simply by playing the game (which unlocks sponsored donations) or by giving their own funds to women via middlemen NGOs. In doing so, players gain a sense of personal empowerment and action—an exchange that reinforces a North to South hierarchy in which players have the expertise, power, and agency to do development, while women in the Global South, as represented in the game, are in need of being acted upon.

TG participates in what Dingo (2012) refers to as the megarhetoric of empowerment by tying women’s individual financial security to the concept of women’s empowerment. Players learn that individual economic gain (via microloans, small businesses, etc.) is key for marginalized women’s empowerment and that financial support of such projects, via select NGOs, is a necessary and effective action to be taken by those in the Global North. Such a framework negates the need to consider broader political action or structural change and instead reinforces “the notion of personal agency and monetary exchange over a broader feminist understanding of the transnational contexts that make donations, charity work, and development programs necessary in the first place” (Dingo, 2012, p. 177). The role of historic and contemporary political and economic systems in contributing to the oppressive realities of women in the developing world is excluded from the narrative; and the asymmetrical North/South divide is used to show women in the Global North their positional advantage in order to call on them for help, rather than acknowledging the ways in which processes of capitalism and globalization reinforce this divide.

By simply unlocking material goods and services through gameplay, the player “can simply forget about the broader context of poverty and feel assuaged by her or his action” (Dingo, 2012, p. 177). Indeed, player posts on TG’s Facebook and Twitter pages reveal such an effect. For example, “I donated a book (for free!) to @RoomtoRead by playing for a short period of time. So empowering” (Twitter, 2016). Fans on Twitter and Facebook called the game “an easy and fun way to create change,” a way to make “a real difference,” a game that “Empowers Women & Donates to Charity” and “something you can do right now … to help real-world women” (Facebook post 2016). One player posted a screen shot from the game that read, “You’ve reached the rank of community advocate!” adding her own note, “What I achieved before bed” (Twitter, 2016).

Players felt they were making a real impact, and they were happy to find doing so took minimal effort. Empowering women was something that could be accomplished before bed, either by donating their own money or simply using their digital labor to unlock the sponsored donations embedded in the game. Rather than a challenge to a system that is inherently asymmetrical, women’s oppression and inequality is presented to players as a depoliticized tool used to engage them in supporting—materially and immaterially—the HTSM’s development approach and to promote new market subjects in the Global South (Karim, 2011).

Conclusion

The focus on women in TG reflects a larger trend of the mainstreaming of women and gender in development in which women’s entrance into the market is seen as a key element of a larger neoliberal development project (Alvarez, 1999). This discourse is far from a feminist one; rather, it takes up gender as a technical and “power neutral indicator of ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ rather than a power-laden field of unequal relations between women and men” (Alvarez, 1999, p. 192). Women, in the game, are represented as potentially productive individuals both in need of and capable of benefiting from the project of development. This focus on individual women as an untapped resource forsakes an analysis of larger local, national, and global structures of power that affect and oppress women and instead focuses on nonpolitical, individual economic solutions that work within the existing power structure.

TG does engage with several community-oriented and political projects as possible solutions to gender-related issues. However, they are presented as less effective than economic-based solutions and (rightly) longer and messier processes. While all of the economic-based solutions in the game lead to immediate gain for the women, the noneconomic solutions prove much less successful. This creates a strong argument for individual, economic-based development, especially for players encountering these issues for the first time. Additionally, the community-based solutions are examined much later in the game. Because only a few thousand players played to the end, most would only encounter the narrative of microlending and individual entrepreneurship.

Further, perhaps to make acceptable the growth of neoliberal development alongside a shrinking State, the game offers up NGOs as the on-the-ground entities responsible for addressing the needs of marginalized women. By shifting responsibility for development to NGOs, individual women, and individual female game players, the negative implications of women’s entry into the current economic system for women are evaded, and its structures of power left intact.

The discourse of poor women and market participation woven into TG is not a new one. However, the strategic digital choices made by the HTSM have added an additional gendered layer to the development process: Through the gaming platform, aesthetics, and narrative choices, individual female players are targeted as key actors in supporting this work aimed at individual women in the Global South. These female players are asked to guide cartoon characters of “Third World Women” along a neoliberal-based path to empowerment via microcredit loans and the startup of a small business and to participate in translating these digital actions into real-world impact via in-game financial exchange. Embedded into the game is an implicit understanding that this is the best strategy for empowering women, that development should focus on individual female subjects, and that female game players should do the work–both immaterial (playing the game, building a network of game players, spreading the word, posting about the game, etc.) and the material (donating real funds)–of development via the game. The emphasis on private aid from those in the North and individual empowerment aligns nicely with a broader neoliberal development agenda that “reduces social change to entrepreneurship in a market-based system, and civic involvement and voice to clicktivism” (Wilkins & Enghel, 2013, p. 169). When the concept of individual empowerment is emphasized above all else, the constraints that social inequalities place on achieving individual success are erased, creating a depoliticized approach that supports a “neoliberal project, in which market-based exchanges are assumed to be beneficial without serious critique” (Wilkins & Enghel, 2013, p. 170).

With the launch of TG, the HTSM is capitalizing on the gendered digital space of a social media-based game coded with feminized visuals as a way to reach out to middle-aged, elite (meaning they have particular socioeconomic resources including money, leisure time, literacy, computer skills, and access) women who, the organization hopes, will become invested in the project of developing the Third World women represented in the game. This focus on women as game players and developers has the potential to do several things. First, TG creates a new and unique space to carry out a discourse that is neither. Further, it actively supports a hierarchy of expertise, power, and agency, which rests with the women who have the access, resources, and skills to play the game, and which constructs them as most capable of directing and impacting the lives of women in the Global South. Additionally, the game capitalizes on what Jarrett (2014) refers to as “immaterial labor 2.0,” in which unpaid digital labor by the “individual consumer/citizen/web user” is disciplinary practice through which the laborer is “organized/interpellated/shaped/seduced” into roles that work within the confines of contemporary capitalism and support social norms and behavior necessary for that system (p. 23). Jarrett sees the concept and political import of “immaterial labor 2.0” as particularly pertinent in studying “women’s work” in digital spaces. By tapping into female game players and their leisure time, HTSM presents development work as a form of immaterial digital labor to be carried out by individual women in order to empower individual Third World women.

An important reason for choosing the Facebook platform was its potential to create and extend a network of support for the HTSM, specifically by calling on and connecting networks of women in the Global North who could use their material and social capital to back this particular development project. Female players recount (via Facebook posts and Tweets) using the game to teach their children about issues of gender inequality and engaging them in active change; they discuss the ways in which their gameplay empowered them; and they celebrate the ways in which TG empowers women in the Global South. Through their posts and Tweets, players extend their support for the project beyond the game, broadening the network of potential developers as they broadcast the role of TG to their social media networks. In doing so, the reach of the HTSM’s narrative of women’s empowerment is extended “beyond the converted,” as Kristof hoped, and the mainstream framing of women as an “untapped resource” is put before a new audience, thanks to the digital labor of female game players.