The first videogames developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, like Spacewar!, Pong and Gotcha (1973), were games implemented on discrete logic and strictly based on the competition of two players, without AI.

Games that featured a single player mode with enemies started appearing in the 1970s. The first notable ones for the arcade included the 1974 Atari games Qwak (duck hunting) and Pursuit (dogfight simulator). Two text-based computer games from 1972, Hunt the Wumpus and Star Trek, also had enemies. Enemy movement was based on stored patterns. The incorporation of microprocessors would allow more computation and random elements overlaid into movement patterns.

The idea was perfected with Space Invaders (1978), sporting an increasing difficulty level, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on hash functions based on the player's input. Galaxian (1979) added more complex and varied enemy movements.

Pac-Man (1980) applied these patterns to maze games, with the added quirk of different personalities for each enemy, and Karate Champ (1984) to fighting games, although the poor AI prompted the release of a second version. Meanwhile, in 1983 the first computer victory against a human player in chess was recorded, although a chess world champion would not be defeated until 1997, with the victory of Deep Blue over Kasparov.

In the 1980s and 1990s the emergence of sophisticated sports games advanced game AI that was built on the tradition of expert systems. Games like Madden Football, Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball all based their AI on an attempt to duplicate on the computer the coaching or managerial style of the selected celebrity. Madden, Weaver and La Russa all did extensive work with these game development teams to maximize the accuracy of the games. Later sports titles allowed users to "tune" variables in the AI to produce a player-defined managerial or coaching strategy.

The emergence of new game genres in the 1990s prompted the use of formal AI tools like finite state machines. Real-Time Strategy games taxed the AI with many objects, incomplete information, pathfinding problems, real-time decisions and economic planning, among other things (Schwab, 2004, p.97-112). The first games of the genre had notorious problems. Herzog Zwei, for example, had almost broken pathfinding and very basic three-state state machines for unit control, and Dune II attacked the players' base in a bee line and used numerous cheats. (Schwab, 2004, p.107). Later games in the genre exhibited much better AI.

Later games have used nondeterministic AI methods, ranging from Battlecruiser 3000AD first use of neural networks in a videogame in 1996, to the emergent behaviour and evaluation of player actions in games like Creatures or Black & White.