Check out Woven - a "Wearable Game Platform"

This isn't the first time we've reported on smart-clothes, and judging by the frequency with which startups like these surface and then quietly disappear it probably won't be the last. It's maybe ridiculous to say "been there, done that" to a promo video for a WiFi-enabled sweatshirt that lights up, but that's the world we live in.

So what's special about project Woven? Its developers envisioned the technology as what it ought to be: a way to play games.

Woven purports to be a "wearable game platform." What that means in practice is a hooded sweatshirt with integrated motion sensors, speakers, vibration-feedback and a three-color LED screen. Crucially - given that this is an article of clothing - the LilyPad Arduino-based wiring array is apparently hand-washable.

It can still do boring, useful stuff like measure your heart rate and monitor workouts, but Woven could also be configured to control Wii games, or it could be its own gaming platform, without recourse to a console or TV.

Woven's concept video may have been edited to give the illusion of a finished product, but it still betrays the project's main problem: it's nowhere close to fully developed. It's not like they have to make it TSA compliant, but it looks like a bomb strapped to somebody's chest. Even if the platform is actually fully functional (and we have our doubts about that) it still faces a bigger problem: it isn't exactly cool.

Occasionally, a gaming platform will walk the tightrope between dorky fun and embarrassment without falling: just look at Wii Sports or Guitar Hero. But "Spooky," the flagship game Woven's designers are promoting the tech with, looks like a dead-in-the-water flop. Even if it were somehow any fun at all, Spooky would still be suicidally embarrassing. Do they honestly think a grown adult would stand at a public bus stop "hunting ghosts" by swatting at the air around his head? (Just watch that promo video!)

It might take a bona fide game design genius to make an interface like Woven work for a gaming experience instead of against it. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Would you like to see full-body motion sensing used for gaming (and how)? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com