I always found it weird when SNES-era console games would refer to the built-in opponent as the "computer". Like, it kind of makes sense, but it wasn't aligned to my understanding of what a computer was.
In any case, since around the release of Unreal Tournament in the late nineties, I've always just referred to them as bots— that feels for me like it strikes the right balance in terms of expressing that it's a non-human participant in the game, and one whose behaviours may be varying degrees of intelligent, as far as leveraging pre-scripted actions and potentially cheats.
"Bot" is an interesting adaptive use of Robot. Robot traditionally describing something mechanical with gears and made of steel. Something pretty different that the computer controlled characters in Unreal.
In any case, since around the release of Unreal Tournament in the late nineties, I've always just referred to them as bots— that feels for me like it strikes the right balance in terms of expressing that it's a non-human participant in the game, and one whose behaviours may be varying degrees of intelligent, as far as leveraging pre-scripted actions and potentially cheats.