Characters' message: Join the voting game

Six networks will air a video featuring gaming characters urging young people to vote.
By JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
WASHINGTON POST
"Stand and Choose," the music video debuting this week, is an all-star cast of more than 50 video gaming characters, a "We Are the World" virtual reality extravaganza. The music is hip-hop. The mood is serious. The message is clear: Young people need to take this voting thing seriously.
The other message is clearer still: For the 18-to-24-year-old electorate, Psymon (of "SSX Tricky"), Nick Kang (of "True Crime"), Raiden (of "Mortal Kombat") and SpongeBob (of, well, "SpongeBob SquarePants"), are pop culture icons to rival most anyone in Spin magazine.
In an unprecedented move, MTV and 12 interactive game publishers, spearheaded by Bruno Bonnell of Atari Inc., teamed up for this get-out-the-vote music video, which will play in rotation on MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV.com, Spike TV and The N.
"The popularity of video games is through the roof," says Dave Sirulnick, head of MTV News. "It's a very important part of young people's lives. So for us, this makes sense."
New ground
For the video game industry, it's a baptism of sorts -- the first time video game characters, or "intellectual properties," as industry insiders call it, are used to encourage voting in a presidential election.
It's a "natural fit," says Douglas Lowenstein, head of the Washington-based Entertainment Software Association. "'Stand and Choose' is a creative, nonpartisan way to reach the generation that has grown up both wanting their MTV and playing computer and video games."
The two-minute, 46-second video begins with Psymon walking through Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. A virtual Tony Hawk, Lara Croft, Sonic and characters from the "Sims" and "Leisure Suit Larry" come into view, all singing the chorus, "Come on and stand/ Choose/ Everybody/ Anybody stand/ Choose/ Anybody/ Come on." It was written and produced by Ross Robinson, who has worked with Limp Bizkit, Korn and the Cure, and directed by Tony Shiff, a producer for MTV2.
MTV's effort
It's only one of many components used by MTV's Choose or Lose: 20 Million Loud! campaign to mobilize the more than 20 million young adults ages 18 to 30 who could greatly influence the election but who routinely haven't shown up at the polls.
This generation is hyper-connected, inundated with a slew of fast-moving images. But that hasn't translated into increased voting participation. Since the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, took effect in 1971, the percentage of eligible 18- to 24-year-olds who voted has consistently declined. It was 49.6 percent in 1972, when Nixon crushed McGovern; it was 26.7 percent in 2000.
Now MTV and the gaming industry are hoping characters from the gaming world will be able to reach this double-click generation.
"Using these video game characters -- in a music video, no less -- is a new device that's a new channel to the voter," says Phil Sharp, director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a congressman from Indiana from 1975 to 1995.
"I hadn't thought of this one. But that's probably my generational problem, and it's a wise thing that somebody did think of it."