One useful but neglected approach to investigating instructional effectiveness of digital games is to manipulate presence of a game element and compare how the game with and without the element promote learning. In this work-in-progress paper, we introduce a comparative study we are preparing on investigating whether presence of a motivating game goal has a positive effect on learning gains. We also present a brewery simulation/game, which we have developed for the study’s purpose. The simulation is the same as the game and contains the same educational materials, but it lacks an explicit game goal: the learners acquire a mental model of the beer production in both applications, but the learning process is “gamified” in the game. We believe that this research approach could help to identify useful features of educational applications.