Reward strategies often vary in different educational settings for different educational purposes. For example, one study employedapplause as the reward during a computerized self-assessment test, and found that applause could impact learners' emotional statesbetween males and females (Moridis & Economides, 2012). Chen et al. (2017a) used in-game cards as rewards in teaching Englishvocabulary and found that the game rewards could not only motivate students but also improve the learning outcome. The mostfrequently explored game rewards might be various kinds of badges, although conflicting findings have been identified ( Jones, Hope,& Adams, 2017; Kehoe & Goudzwaard, 2015; Mcdaniel & Fanfarelli, 2015; Pedro, Santos, Aresta, & Almeida, 2015; Shields & Chugh,2017; Tomić et al., 2017). For example, one study found that digital badges could be incorporated as an assessment model and couldbenefit learners who have high expectations for learning and place value on learning tasks (Reid, Paster, & Abramovich, 2015).Z.-G. Ge Computers & Education 126 (2018) 143–152However, another study found that badges might not be effective in motivating students to complete assignments or attend courses(Tomić et al., 2017).Although existing literature has attached much importance to game reward strategies in game-based learning, there is insufficientempirical research on their application (Sun-Lin & Chiou, 2017). Consistent with this need, the present study explores the applicationof a forfeit-or-prize game reward strategy in an e-learning environment.