About online gaming, VR and RPGs Gaming is basically social. Console games where almost always designed to be played by one or two persons. PC games introduced environments that forced games to be played as solitaire - one screen, one keyboard. Recently we have seen invasion of multiplayer PC games. Those are mostly multiplayer first person shooters.
Virtual worlds offers great environment for social gaming and role-playing.
Players are willing to maintain suspension of disbelief and let their imagination enrich the game world. The virtual worlds created with MUD software are dramaturgically and socially rich, and MUD players have been able to device means of communicating social context cues through the textual medium. For example gaming in some game centred MUDs focus more or less on only killing mobiles, monster that game controls and gaining experience points. Some ways of playing tabletop role-playing games don't differ at all from that. Social codes of some MUD demand role-playing when interacting with other characters.