The comparisons of the influences of prior knowledge on two game-based learning systems

• Prior knowledge has positive effects on declarative knowledge.
• Prior knowledge is not always useful to game-based learning.
• The nature of game-based learning plays an important role.
• Prior knowledge affects performance and perception.

Game-based learning provides many benefits, such as enhancing the interaction with students and stimulating their learning motivation. Thus, it is popular to learners who have diverse characteristics. To this end, individual differences play an essential role. Among various individual differences, previous studies demonstrated that prior knowledge has great effects on game-based learning. However, such studies mainly considered a single game-based learning system. To address this issue, this study examined how prior knowledge affects students' reactions to two different types of game based learning systems, i.e., the Machinarium and the CSI: Web Adventures. The former delivers procedural knowledge while the latter provides declarative knowledge. The results from this study indicate that prior knowledge has positive impacts in the CSI group while it has negative impacts in the Machinarium group. These findings imply that prior knowledge is useful for the context of declarative knowledge while it may not be helpful for the context of procedural knowledge.