Sign Your Name Across My Art

One lazy Wednesday lunchtime, Vic and I were slumped in the sunken lounge of my parents’ executive Balmain apartment, bored with wondering what it would be like to have a real job, and instead - or perhaps as an extension thereof - getting existential.

“So I’m like one guy,” I said. “One guy in a city pushing five million. I’m lost, in the twisty maze of topless towers, a gnat, a mote. How can I make myself heard?”

“An online petition,” said Vic, “definitely in an online petition.”

I realised he was right. Sitting there in a feculent cloud of whatever, he had hit the nail on the head. So we fired up Firefox 2, waited for it to restart after it crashed, and pointed ourselves to www.petitiononline.com. And this is what we found:

PETITION TO MAKE SPORE LESS AWESOME

Dear EA,

We the undersigned are concerned that Spore is looking to be too good of a game. We want the game to be less awesome so that Spore 2 has less to live up to. If Spore is too good then the sequel will necessarily be crap. We’re talking Deus Ex vs Deus Ex: Invisible War here. So therefore if Spore is more crap, then Spore 2 will be better or at least not seem as crap as it will if Spore is really good. Thanks!

11481 Total Signatures

PETITION TO MAKE WORLD OF WARCRAFT FREE TO PLAY

Dear Blizzard,

My mates and I sat down last night and we figured out that we’ve spent $1017 on World of Warcraft subscriptions. We reckon this means you’ve made - because if you multiply it by 10 million which is the number of subscribers right - this means you’ve made like $1.017 billion from World of Warcraft. We think this is more than enough money and you should make the game free to play from now on. We’ll still buy high level items and characters from Chinese Gold Farmers so it’s not like the game will stop making money altogether, right?

3246145 Total Signatures

PETITION TO MAKE CRYSIS RUN ON LOW END MACHINES

Dear CryTek,

Please make sure the next version of Crysis, Crysis Warhead, runs on my Athlon 1300 and GeForce 6600. This was a good gaming machine back in 2003 - or at least, it was pretty good, I couldn’t afford a 6800 - and logically therefore it should be way better today because Moore’s Law says a CPU will double its transistors in just 18 months. Anyway, the point is that Crysis runs crap on my machine and it should run good, so please make it run good. A version for Nintendo DS would be awesome too so I could use the stylus to throw chickens into the freeze-ray. Also, can you make Psycho Australian because the Poms are all a bunch of Pommy whingers.

0 Total Signatures

PETITION TO CHANGE THE BOX-ART FOR THE STARCRAFT BATTLE CHEST

Dear Blizzard,

I bought the StarCraft BattleChest a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been playing the game and it’s awesome sure, but the box art is just like the original box covers arranged in like, a row and it’s not very inspiring. Can you please make the box art look better so the next time I buy it I buy it even faster and won’t feel so bad about having just spent $50 on a ten year-old game.

543891 Total Signatures

PETITION TO TAKE THE SWEARS OUT OF FALLOUT 3

Dear Bethesda,

My congregation and I are very angry at the amount of profanity in Fallout 3. Blowing the limbs off a hideous mutant and leaving it twitching and bleeding on the ground is a sacred thing, which our Sunday School group is really looking forward to. This game is perfect for children, but for those awful swears. Foul language just cheapens the artistic triumph of the way you can shoot a man in the face and watch his eyeballs hit the wall behind him. Do this immediately or we will use our website to inform all parents that they should only play the game with the speakers switched off.

42 Total Signatures

PETITION TO GET GAMERS TO SHUT THE HELL UP

Dear Gamers,

It’s all the developers in the world here, just throwing up this petition to let you know we really don’t care. Do you have $45 million in VC to create a new game on the back of IP you spent nineteen years in hock to said VC to turn into an international icon? When you can say your games make billions a year and are so awesome they get sent-up on South Park, then you can start complaining about rainbows. We like rainbows. Here’s a newsflash: THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT THE RAINBOWS. Seriously, you’re telling us you won’t buy the game because of the rainbows? You lack both the GUTS and the SELF CONTROL to not even queue for hours for a pointless midnight launch. Your pre-orders bought our Porsches. In the words of our patron saint: SUCK IT DOWN!

2490569 Total Signatures