binary solo said:
Ever heard of solitaire? Single player card games, i.e. the ones you could play all by yourself with a deck or 2 of cards and no computer, are some of the most played computer games. So for a lot of people single player games on computer are simply an easier way of playing a traditional single player game: no having to remember where your decks of cards are; no chance of losing a single card from the deck rendering the whole deck useless; the cards don't wear out requiring you to buy new decks occasionally; the cards always stay in a nice neat pile when you're playing. Solitaire didn't just become popular when it got on computer either, it's always been a popular set of card games, so even saying "almost no such thing" is pretty well off the mark.
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That's where the term I bolded comes into play 
. But by and large, before video games, no one sat in a room for hour and hours on end playingany kind of game by themselves. Single-player card games are used to pass time for a few minutes at best, not something that's supposed to keep you entranced for hours upon hours.
I agree that games are extensions of ideas that came before gaming. Take the RPG. Tabletop RPGs have always required several players. However, with most RPGs, there is one player, and the role of 'game master' goes to the developer. Now, with the rise of Massively Multiplayer RPGs, this is beginning to change, though they are almost an entirely different genre thanks to their lack of a focused story and emphasis on grinding/instancing. In a game like Kingdom Hearts, why not allow another player to jump in and play as Goofy or Aladdin or whoever else is in your party?
You can still have just one main character while having serviceable multiplayer. For instance, Psi-Ops on Xbox had a coop mode where one player moved the character around while the other controlled aiming and shooting your guns and Psi powers. It didn't take a lot of effort, yet it made the game a lot more fun.
