Reply #20: Earlier than that.

[Ready4Change]

I used to do PC hardware maintenance back in the day when there were IBM PCs (mostly 8088's and 8086's. 80286s were too rare and expensive to be anything but servers) and a few other brands that claimed they were PC compatible. In my kit of tools and disks was a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator. We'd use it when a department got a new brand of computer to test how compatible it was. That version of MSFS was monochrome, and frame rates were often only around 5 fps.

Gaming has been used in military and disaster training pretty much forever. It often hasn't been called that, because some 'adults' can't handle words like 'game' or 'play' of 'fun' being connected to 'serious work.' So sometimes it's 'simulations' or 'abstraction exercises.' But it's there, and it's one of the most productive means of finding creative solutions possible.

Go Navy.