It all a matter of pleasing the public.
If you make a game (especially commercially), you have to please the players. Most players are not at home with AI techniques, depending on the AI character and the game, they may even hardly notice its existance. So the main goal is to make something that doesn't stand out as "it acts weird".
If you write a thesis, the public is your supervisor. His/her interest is in the science that you use to solve the problem. If it looks good, that's nice too, but likely not the main thing you are graded on (but you should of course discuss this with your supervisor, if only to avoid nasty surprises!)
Now if you look at AI techniques as listed here, you're looking at solutions in the game case, as everybody in this forum does "games" in one way or another.
Those techniques are designed to work in the practical cases that you encounter for your average game. Those techniques are "use any means you can to show the player what he expects". If the shortest way is "cheating", eg by hard-coding a solution, great! Problem solved, let's move on to the next item on the todo list.
The scientific approach is not about getting to the end of the todo list before the deadline or about fooling players enough that they buy it. It's about investigating the proper way (which can mean lots of different things, ask your supervisor) to create an AI.
Edit: So the things listed here in the topic are definitely interesting to study, it gives you a wider view of the topic, which is never bad. You may even find a way to combine the scientific solution, and a technique listed here, who knows!
As for steps in the future, not sure. The topic and the solution is probably just one of the things they will look at. You as person is just as important is my guess, if not more (but I don't know for sure).