ABSTRACT
The specific audiovisual mappings that are created in video game conventions can be distinguished more precisely by drawing on general types of conceptual metaphors. Video games most prominently draw on two different types: system metaphors and event structure metaphors. This chapter shows video games in general and player-controlled characters in particular provide different metaphoric dimensions that relevantly contribute to their appealing and entertaining quality. On a most basic level, video games can be considered a metaphoric mode of playing as. Accordingly, abstract game technology is transferred into multimodal representations that let players interact with abstract rules in terms of fictional actions in a narrative framework. Significantly, player-controlled characters structure even these very basic metaphoric relations as the most common device for player agency. Especially in 3D animated third-person games, however, these characters also incorporate specific audiovisual metaphors, which guide the player's cognitive, affective, and sensory-motor experience of both the narrative and the ludic meaning of a game.
