something else I missed that's nearby?" Olsen elaborates. "Players are genius at missing stuff," agrees Walton. "There's always an opportunity to FIFA Coins help." How can the climate outside a game enhance the stories? "As game makers we provide the stage... but we don't do enough to take those stories out of the community and highlight them and integrate them in the game," opines Kern. He remembers an in-game event in a MUD called Gemstone he used to enjoy back in the day, and how
felt when a player "newspaper" highlighted his achievement in an in-game event."It was such a high as a player," he says. He visualizes being able to go out into the Forza Horizon 3 credits community and find those personal stories and integrate them somehow so they can be a bigger part of the game world. "That's where the cool stories come from," adds Kern.EVE Online's community may be "different" than many expect, says Bye, but the developers at CCP have done in his view a strong job of
themselves from taking "god" roles and letting players create massive and tangible stories and events in the game. Olsen recognizes that there's equal appeal in feeling like a writer of a story versus feeling like a participant in a strongly-crafted narrative. Donovan asserts that even "small-group narratives" can be important; the actions of one's guild in an MMO create meaningful storytelling for the players. "There's an opportunity for people to focus on even micro-narrative, which
necessarily require as much from the developer," adds Donovan."There's time to democratize stories in games," agrees Kern. Still, exploring this true player participation is still fledgling, Walton suggests. While community sites and extensions like those with which some of the panelists work, presenting guides, forums and tools, have flourished, developers are only beginning to mmogo explore new ways to explore this passionate player behavior. Yet investment in cultivating deeper