Good observation. I would bet that the trade-off you suggest is indeed the original reason, however, our social structures have evolved around our pain, physical and emotional. One way to put it is that degraded performance is a bug on the individual level but a feature on the social level. It would be difficult to have a friend who doesn't have insecurities.

Thank you Koen. The video by Stuart Armstrong linked in the DeepMind paper is pretty close to what I wanted to do :( The DeepMind paper also does similar things.

While I might be able to improve a bit on these examples, I'm thinking that this probably isn't the best place for me to invest my efforts. Thanks for letting me know about these. 

I'm interested in your solutions, I'll send an email to you privately about it.

I'll check that out, thank you. 

Could you please expand on the hot take, please? Consider that a big part of the appeal for me is just being able to display the problem and make it relatable for people who aren't from the field. 

Also, what kind of richness do you think makes the qualitative difference that you allude to? If the world was 3D or had continuous action or had more game mechanics, would that have made the difference for you?