What Role do Metaphors Play in Game-Based Learning Processes?

This chapter explores the role played by metaphors in learning games and game-based learning processes. The aim is to contribute better understanding of the mechanisms of how such games contribute to learning and learning transfer. On the basis of an analytical strategy that emphasises metaphors as storylines, actors, acts and movement, three learning games are analysed in order to understand how learning emerges in association to game-embedded metaphors.
As shown in this chapter, metaphors seem to play a profound role in game-based learning, both by providing participants with a suitcase containing a framework to be unpacked in a subsequent practice, as well as a tool for disciplined imagination and bringing participant experience into the learning situation. By serving both as a vessel for ideas and as a tool for provoking thoughts, metaphors are likely to be key to understanding what participants bring with them from a learning session, and what they put to use subsequently.