  The role of AI in esports is shifting from leveraging games as a testbed for
improving AI algorithms to addressing the needs of the esports players such as
enhancing their gaming experience, esports skills, and providing coaching. For
AI to be able to effectively address such needs in esports, AI agents require a
theory of mind, that is, the ability to infer players' tactics and intents. To
that end, in this position paper, we argue for human-in-the-loop approaches for
the discovery and computational embedding of the theory of mind within
behavioral models of esports players. We discuss that such approaches can be
enabled by player-centric investigations on situated cognition that will expand
our understanding of the cognitive and other unobservable factors that
influence esports players' behaviors. We conclude by discussing the
implications of such a research direction in esports as well as broader
implications in engineering design and design education.
