This interesting paper clearly describes how the surrogate competition model in game-based learning can lead to a more relaxed and effective student interaction. Using the My-Pet-My-Arena game for learning Chinese, the authors examine and show the positive effects of the surrogate competition.

Using a well-structured experiment, the authors show that surrogate competition in a game-based learning environment influences student learning in terms of motivation, achievement, and belief. The experiment was divided into three steps. At each step, a slightly different variation of the game was given to students to learn Chinese idioms.

The proposed game is based on the concept of pet care, which was incorporated into the game storyline. This type of game is very attractive to children. One typical example is JumpStart Pet Rescue for the Wii [1]. To the best of my knowledge, there are no recent similar research studies published in the literature. This clearly indicates that there is room for research and development of character-mediated competition mechanisms in learning games [2].