Abstract
The use of educational games can be either playful or serious. This article asks to what extent such a framing has consequences for the pedagogical potential of game-based learning. It has been suggested that it is precisely the differentiation of the game from the seriousness of everyday life that makes it so entertaining and motivating, but that, on the other hand, the pretence of the game possibly reduces the readiness of the addressees to adopt the learning game contents into their knowledge repertoire. Depending on the definition of the situation, one and the same learning game could thus be considered more or less entertaining, but complementarily also more or less informative. These hypotheses were empirically tested in an experimental setting with 8th grade students (n = 54). Subjects from two independent samples worked on the same educational game, but one was led to believe that it was an educational software for lessons, the other that it was a pure computer game for leisure time. Subsequently, the entertainment and the willingness to adopt the media content were recorded by questionnaire. Although the frame of reference alone did not have the expected direct influence on entertainment and willingness to receive the media content, there were descriptive and in some cases inferential statistical interactions with the frame of reference and the gender of the test subjects and their preference for educational games.
