Petition Seeks To Bring More Controller Customization to Consoles

Feel like doing something positive for all the evil you generally cause on a daily basis? Consider this your good deed for the day.

Gamer, comic, and bad-ass Chuck Bittner has started an online petition to get the major game companies to allow button mapping changes in their games. Bittner is disabled, having become a quadraplegic 15 years ago after a car accident. Yet he didn’t let a little thing like a partially severed C5 vertebrae stop his love for gaming.

These days his game of choice is Modern Warfare 2, which he plays using his mouth. While he is good (telling Plugged In that he’s gone 30-0 in a match before), controller limitations force him to go without using his sight and shooting at the same time, among other things. His new petition looks to change that.

Currently well over 7000 signatures (I’m proud to be #7329), the petition seeks to have button mapping options included in all major game releases or consoles.  Once it reaches 10,000 signatures the petition will be sent off to various developers like Treyarch and Infinity Ward as well as the big console makers. The developers are asked to add button mapping to their games while the console manufacturers are asked to include customizable controller options that can be saved to the systems’ memory.

I applaud Chuck for his efforts to help out other disabled gamers who could use these controller changes to make gaming a possibility. But, as the petition reads, this isn’t just for disabled gamers; “but also for millions of gamers who find today’s game presets don’t meet their needs.” If you want to help out not just disabled gamers, but the gaming community at large, take a minute to fill out the petition.