[erikb]

This is more about historical AI challenges. When Chess was beat people realized painfully and happily that they can't beat Go with the same approach. Therefore it was the new Mount Everest.

And Starcraft is a competition because SC1 was a game that was easily adaptable for AI hobby coders and competitions. A little like they have this Robo Soccer world championship for Robo builders. It's part of the domain culture I guess.