Are games democratic fiction?

Always interesting Greg Costikyan asserts that games are a democratic form of fiction. (When he talks about "Manifesto," that's his new game company.) He's talking about removing the barriers between game creators and game players.

Years ago, the science fiction editor Tappan King told me something I hadn't thought of before: That games are the democratization of fiction. His point was that conventional fiction media (prose, film, theater, TV and the rest) are essentially aristocratic in nature: the Artist creates, the audience consumes. Games, contrariwise, allow individual players to participate in the creation of their fictional experience.

The essence of this thesis is the best part of gaming. A game is designed to function within a certain set of parameters, but neither the designers nor the players know exactly how that game will progress. Like a story that I don't know the end to, I find this fascinating.