AI in games dates back all the way to the earliest games, even as far back as Namco's arcade hit Pac-Man. The AI was rudimentary at best, but even in Pac-Man, each of the enemies—Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde—had unique behaviors that challenged the player in different ways. Learning those behaviors and reacting to them adds a huge amount of depth to the game and keeps players coming back, even after over 30 years since its release.
It's the job of a good game designer to make the game challenging enough to be engaging, but not so difficult that a player can never win. To this end, AI is a fantastic tool that can help abstract the patterns that entities in games follow to make them seem more organic, alive, ...
