Storyplay (also known as interactive storytelling) is an art form that combines the strengths of games with those of traditional narrative. Storyworlds, which realize this new art form, are highly interactive, like games. Like stories, though, events center on the people. The computer-generated characters whom the player meets are emotionally aware, each with their own personalities, relationships, moods, and personal agendas. They are in essence primitive “AIs.”
Maybe the term AI is confusing in the context of a computer game? If you're thinking about advanced AI that is emotionally aware, has a personality and psycological profile, has voice recognition software and speech capability, etc., then you've got a very unrealistically high expectation. A decent programmable (or scripted) computer opponent is more reasonable for a $60 game. I speak of reasonable AI enhancements and improvements; you seem to speak of unattainable SciFi. We are talking about two different things.
They are machines, they think like machines. It is not a question of probability.
Machines do not think. They are programmed with fuzzy logic and probabilities to produce variance. Rulesets and national objectives can be programmed to produce reasonable outcomes, with some variance for replayability. Personalities can be introduced to cause the computer opponent to be more aggressive or more passive when probablities are used to generate a decision. Ultimately a game decision is a decision and, as I said, the end result is the same whether your opponent is human or AI-controlled.
