Games Businessmen Play

The lord of the manor, an unfeeling fellow, imposes a rent increase on his poor tenant farmer. In his turn, the farmer cuts his field hand's wages to nearly nothing. In the next move, the destitute worker is sent off to debtors' prison.

Is this a synopsis of Dickens' Hard Times? Not at all. It is a typical sequence in a game called Manchester, in which the participants replay Britain's Industrial Revolution.

Unlike Monopoly, which gets parlor fun out of make-believe real estate transactions, Manchester cannot be bought at the nearest toy store. It is produced, under contract, for various business, government and educational institutions by Abt Associates, a 20 month-old fledgling in the Rand-type "think factory" research field. Headed by Clark Abt, 37, former advanced-systems manager at Raytheon, the Cambridge, Mass., company undertakes all sorts of computer projects, but it has made its biggest splash so far in the business of devising serious games. Its first contract was a game for the Defense Department that was aimed at teaching counterinsurgency strategy to military trainees. In Manchester, "farmers" and "mill owners" pick cards with cost-production schedules, every player "tries to maximize his income, and each move represents one cycle of bargaining between the economic classes.

For U.S. Trust Co. trainees in Manhattan, Abt is preparing a game that will take two full days to play. It will give seven players practice in every phase of bank activity, will have them investing in imaginary but typical stocks. Other Abt games are Adman, Automation and one meant to give businessmen a better knowledge of a union's viewpoint by making them play labor negotiators in bargaining sessions. A few company managers have even asked Abt for games that would constructively enliven dull directors' meetings.

So far this year, Abt's contracts come to $650,000. And Abt sees plenty of chance for more. Too much of business management training is "inefficient and outmoded," says Abt, because the trainees are forced to sit idly by and watch others. "People like to act," says Abt. "They like to make something happen." They also like to play games.

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