That isn't very easy to realize though, not too long ago game designers thought that multiplayer was mostly about having other players as fun challenges to over

That isn't very easy to realize though, not too long ago game designers thought that multiplayer was mostly about having other players as fun challenges to overcome. But people like having other people even if they never really interact, just having others there that you can show what you did to and talk about stuff is fun. But point is, that realization isn't that simple, it took a long time for cooperative games to become common. In early days game consoles had cooperative split screen to let two players play at the same time, not because that was more fun, so it took a really long time for cooperative modes to become standard in online gaming because it wasn't at all obvious that people liked cooperative play. MMORPGs were the main cooperative online games for a long time. Today we have dedicated short session cooperative games, those are still very popular.