Abstract Past studies on the issue of learning‐theory foundations in game‐based learning stressed the importance of establishing learning‐theory foundation and provided an exploratory examination of established learning theories. However, we found research seldom addressed the development of the use or failure to use learning‐theory foundations and categorized these learning theories into relative types and synthesized their development. We investigate this issue from the perspective of learning theories invoked to underpin educational computer game design and use based on the four types of learning theories: behaviourism, cognitivism, humanism and constructivism. Because the investigation needs to examine and analyse the results from a large number of independent previous studies, this study applied the meta‐analysis method to present a more comprehensive description and discussion of the influence and implications of the findings. This study shows the distribution of development trends for the use of learning theory as a theoretical foundation, as opposed to those that fail to use learning theory in game‐based learning, along with the distribution of types and principles of learning theories that used a learning‐theory foundation. These new findings can supplement the results of previous studies with regard to the issue of learning‐theory foundations in game‐based learning. The contributions of this study for the issue of learning‐theory foundations in game‐based learning are discussed.
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