User:Lunaramethyst/Clark Abt

Clark C. Abt is an American researcher born August 31, 1929 in Cologne, Germany. He became an American citizen in 1945, at 16.

Biography
In 1937, Abt came to live in the United States. In 1947, he applied as an aeronautics student at the MIT, where he graduated in 1951. He then served four month in the merchant navy as a mate, then spent a year at John Hopkins University as en English teacher, eventually obtaining a Master in the Writing, Talking and Drama Deptartment for his thesis, titled A Year of Poems.

He maried Wendy Peter in November 3, 1971, fathering a boy, Thomas, and a girl, Emily.

Works
Abt is known for his game theory book Serious Games (1970), establishing a basis for the Serious Game concept.

In this work and subsequent ones, he described sports games, role playing games and then marginal computer games as mediums for educative, political or marketing ideas. This interest probably stems from Abt's involvement with the development of TEMPER, an early computer wargame designed for a Cold War context.

Ultimately, Abt's envisioned games as a mean of formation and abilities development.