Game AI

I was wondering why making good AI is perceived to be so hard? I'm not saying it's easy and I don't know a lot about computer programming, but isn't AI just a bunch of "if-then-else" statements. For example, it this happens, do this, or this, or this. Or is there more to it than that? Please, could some one educate me a little ...

The problem with making 'good' AI is trying to make it human rather than some perfect machine. Enemies shouldn't know exactly where you are if they can't see you (in many games they somehow seem to gravitate towards your position, even if they don't see you retreat to said position), they shouldn't have perfect aim and they definitely should not be able to hit you with their gun if it's pointed 90 degrees in the wrong direction (although the last is not really an AI problem).

I can't really offer much in the form of detailed information on why doing this is so hard. I'd imagine you'd get a better answer if you go to the forums on sites like AI for Game Developers or About AI

Ah a subject of great interest to me. AI is not if-else then statements. If taht was the case then you would really notice it hehehe. Games tend to use algorithms like A* algorithm for path finding and using state models etc. [EDIT - well actually state models are if then else statement but same could be said for everything since conditional statements are fundamental element of programming]

They are not that sophisticated. When you get to how real world robots work then we get to some interesting AI. Neural networks are often used for recognition and reinfocement learning as its name suggests for learning how to best achieve goals.

The problem is that these are very computer intensive operations which is why we don't seem them in games since games require updates like 1/60th of a second.