By the way, in case anyone knows, I would LOVE to track down the origins of this idea. A dozen years later, when I first thought to ask Dr. Harper, he did not remember the source, probably one of his TA's circa Fall 1992.
But I think military and other more "physical" simulations likely pre-date all of this; these systems have their own rule systems for the various "pieces" on the "board", and use things like dice and other random number generators to determine how things progress.
There's also probably more than a few fictional stories which set up this idea as well.