I think one major difference between pvp games and games like mario/pokemon campaign is that in the former case, the machine is competing with a meat learning algorithm. That is, it doesn’t have to find a good enough solution to a static map, but best an alternative optimization strategy (powered by wetware) before it can reasonably claim success.
That, and ofc, games with a competitive scene come about because of their complexity: a pvp game is not expected to be “won” in the fashion that a single player game can be. In fact, ideally there would be no perfect/optimal play; merely optimal play given a particular meta, which should shift as the meta does (a near-optimal strategy is found, but as it becomes common, a normally weak but counter-strategy becomes more useful, in a perfect world this would be acyclic)
That, and ofc, games with a competitive scene come about because of their complexity: a pvp game is not expected to be “won” in the fashion that a single player game can be. In fact, ideally there would be no perfect/optimal play; merely optimal play given a particular meta, which should shift as the meta does (a near-optimal strategy is found, but as it becomes common, a normally weak but counter-strategy becomes more useful, in a perfect world this would be acyclic)