Terribly late on this one, but Clickable Culture's Tony Walsh has a good post explaining the upcoming Gamestar Mechanic, "...a game designed to teach game design skills within a steampunk-inspired game world", and notable because it's funded by the giant MacArthur charitable foundation as part of a larger five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative.

As Walsh explains: "Aimed at young people, the project is a collaboration between Gamelab (New York) and the Games, Learning, and Society Group (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Project leads include James Paul Gee (author, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy), as well as Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (authors, Rules of Play)."

There's now an awesome directory of Gamestar Mechanic-related posts on the MacArthur Foundation site, including (the pictured) Katie Salen overviewing the entire concept, explaining: "Gamestar Mechanic is a different kind of massively multiplayer online game experience. Players do not just take part in a game that was made for them. Instead, they create their own games to play and share, all within a larger MMO experience. The core audience is junior high school and high school students, a demographic proven to be captivated by online media creation." Really looking forward to this.