[zachrose]

Is there anything out there like this but less technical and more on game mechanics and genres?

[slurgfest]

How does this help you make a game? It seems to me that it would not be very helpful unless you could already make games.

Anyway: Coursera classes often use premises like this to motivate teaching some specific set of technical skills which are the real point.

[zachrose]

If you can write JavaScript but have no working model for how to make an engaging game.