Threshold Objects
One of my favorite games when I was younger was "Life & Death". I
believe that it was produced by Broderbund Software. The interface
was a non-typical one, and it utilized many of the possibilities of a
mouse driven game. The object of the game was to successfully
diagnose and operate on patients. This process began with diagnosis,
which involved interviewing the patient and using the mouse on their
stomach in order to determine the location of the pain. The main
threshold object was the tray of instruments in the operating room.
You could use a scalpel, clamps, a needle to sew up to wound and a
number of other instruments.
Another fascinating threshold object was used as the game's copy
protection. Every now and then you would get a call on you beeper. A
virtual beeper would appear on the screen. At this point you would
wave to take out the cardboard beeper provided with the game, and find
and enter some particular code, in order to verify that you had
actually bought the game. I think this correspondence between a real
life object and a virtual object is a very interesting idea.
spreer@mit.edu