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...and in games, you actually want smoke and mirrors:

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/shouldn-t-our-enemies-b...

If you really had hard and strong AI, a lot of games certainly wouldn't be as much fun to play anymore for casual players (spare some games you want to be frustrating). You want the protagonist to eventually conquer the enemies and win.

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This might be true for FPS and other genres where reflex and speed are the most important factors. However most competitive strategy games will definitely benefit from strong intelligent AIs. For example in Age of Empires, the problem isn't that the AI is too strong (they're not - with enough practice anyone can beat the hardest AI). The problem is that they don't play like a human would, and are exploitable with certain strategies which even a beginner player wouldn't fall for.

Yup. Imagine a boss in a game decides it's not in his best interest to be predictable, or take matters in his own hands and attack the players when they aren't ready. Or any number of things that sounds cool on paper, but would be exceedingly frustrating when actually playing the game.

Imagine a boss in a game tired of fighting every day, and just giving up and not fighting back.

That's essentially the plot of Wreck-It Ralph.

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