Misses the point. The point is that each such instance is an example of something where the fidelity of the simulation is restricted by technical ability, not desire. It answers the "why" by giving a concrete example of an area where we keep pushing the boundaries of simulation, because more fidelity gives more believable interactions.
We went from SimCity and Civilization with really dumb AIs that never seemed remotely real, to games like Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri where the faction leaders had distinct personalities, to Sims with large sets of competing traits. And yes, they're still crude. But you have game designers out there today toying with individual neural nets for the NPCs to augment the generic AIs.
And keep in mind it's not a question of whether or not we can do this tomorrow, but whether or not *our descendants from now until the heat death of the universe - or the end of civilization - will do this. If they do it even once, it's 50/50 whether you're in the simulation. Every additional run reduces the chance that we're in the "real world".
Hardly. They’re nowhere near a simulation of a “reality.”
How does a game character “see” something?
By a global agent checking the position of that character, along with the position of other characters, and a bunch of other variables and conditions, then tells the character if it sees anything.
This is a far, far, far cry from everything being made up of particles, emitting countless photons every “tick”, and those photons being absorbed by certain materials, emitting electrons and chemicals that travel to a neuron....
Nothing inside a game actually generates sound waves, or infrared and other parts of the EM spectrum that can only be perceived by certain creatures and tools..
It’s not even a simulation of that, just an extremely simplified and filtered representation of the end result as perceived by us, that we find convincing enough for the context.