Your argument is very unclear, and your last sentence makes no sense. What exactly is the problem with jointly learning perception and control? They are widely considered to be intertwined problems in robotics. Not independent at all. But for what it's worth, you will find researchers working on all sorts of different approaches.
Clearly this competition is an attempt to build off successes in reinforcement learning with agents that play games using only images and scores.
Clearly this competition is an attempt to build off successes in reinforcement learning with agents that play games using only images and scores.