When i was growing up “correspondence chess” was a thing. Where you submitted your next move to your opponent over snail mail. Even back then I thought this was too slow for me, but I later understood that people would play many different game simultaneously.
It's still a thing and they even have world championships in it. Everyone always draws because it's basically just Stockfish vs. Stockfish. (Okay in the most recent one there were actually a shared first place, a shared second place, and one person in third place. The latter died during the tournament, and whether the others ended up in first or second place depended on whether they had drawn with third place before he died or if they won on time.)
