Nobody has invented effective programmatic mechanisms/patterns for general decision-making anywhere between if-else state machines and neural nets. The former becomes unmanageable spaghetti and the latter gives no theatrical guarantees.

So we're stuck in a kind of AI limbo.

Efforts exist in beating humans in specific games like chess; these games are often symmetric, i.e. all players compete on fair ground, and the AIs aim to replace human players. But most games don't want this! Most games seek theatrical asymmetry in computer-controlled agents. Most games want the illusion of cleverness without actually being clever, because most players don't want their gaming experience interrupted by undefeatable killer robots. Most games are power fantasies.

I posit that what we actually want is simply some programming pattern for managing complexity in autonomous theatrical agents. Some way to organize the creative will of the game designer easily enough that it democratizes independent developers to craft interesting behaviors.

I've got my own ideas but they're as of yet unproven.