Agreed, especially because analog controllers have been common in video games since forever. Apple 2's joysticks were pretty much all analog. Was Pong analog? (I'm pretty sure the Atari 2600 paddle controllers were not analog, they're more like mouse wheel). The Atari 7800 had analog joysticks.

The 2600 had paddles & "driving controllers". The former were potentiometers, the latter used quadrature encoding like a mouse.

All the Pong (and clone) controllers I've come across were analog. But the Fairchild Channel F's controllers were digital.

Analog (as in continuous) was the holy grail back then. I was blown away the first time I got to try a real analog stick for a flight sim.

I've got a bit of an industrial control logic background and that's my go-to framework as well :)