Part of the problem is... games have explicitly defined rules, start and end points, boundaries, and discrete "win" and "loss" states (and sometimes "draw"). If the game itself (ie, all the rules including the ability to judge "win", "lose", or "draw") can be easily represented in a simple computer program, we shouldn't be surprised that a complex computer program can master the game.<p>The real world is not a finite problem with explicit rules, obvious boundaries, well-known start conditions, or any way to judge a specific situation as "win", "lose", or "draw". But, even if you want to argue that specific tasks can be broken down this way, you still have to be able to represent this subset of reality in the computer, before AI magic can even begin to work on the problem.