You can’t escape Call of Duty 4, even on Primetime TV.
For those of you who haven’t seen the show, Chuck is about a geek who becomes a secret agent after having all of the CIA’s and NSA’s secrets imported into his brain. He works for “Buy More” at the “Nerd Herd” Station (equivalent to Best Buy Geek Squad, only they use Mini Coopers instead of Beetles), and one of his favorite video games just happens to be Call of Duty. It was briefly mentioned in the first episode as well, but last night’s show had blatant, shameful product placement wrote right into it. You can watch the episode here (select episode 9).
Less than two minutes in, Chuck and his friend Morgan are making plans for the evening.
Morgan: “…Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, me and you, sniper, on my back, watching me, Oscar Delta.”
Chuck: “blah blah no sorry I have a date to make the show appeal to women blah blah”
Geeze, could it get any worse than that? Yes, it did:
Slutty Asian Chick: “Way to own the noobs Morgan! Use your Deep Impact perk!”
Morgan: “Don’t backseat perk me, I know when to use my perks.”
Slutty Asian Chick: “I have to tell you Morgan, I think you are one of the best Call of Duty 4 players in the store.”
Can I outright accuse Activision of paying NBC to insert the name drops? No, that would probably be libel. But NBC Universal has shown interest in video games before , and I would not be surprised if video games were interested in NBC.
I do love geekiness in television, but that means your target audience is smart enough to pick up on these signs. Just be careful.
Now, who wants bacon salt?
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Maybe it’s a marketing deal, maybe it’s just the writers authentically inserting stuff geeks care about, but Chuck has had multiple gaming references from the very first episode. From the obvious they’re-playing-Gears-of-War-on-screen to the subtle you’ll-only-recognize-the-back-of-the-box-if-you-already-own-Forza. And they’re not all current games. They revealed that Chuck and his old college roomie Bryce bonded when they found they shared a love of Zork. I don’t think anyone is paying anything to promote Zork.
bwhahaha. Use your lame marketing perk!
RE: AriesDog
You could be very right. The show has displayed a lot of video games, but not nearly as much as COD4 was in this episode.
I think NBC just loves Call Of Duty. Watch episode 3 of season 3 of The Office(I checked on my dvd, i didnt just know that, not that big of a nerd). The stanford branch plays COD(one of the WWII ones) as a team building exercise. They comment on a loevel by name and call Jim a “sabatuer(sp?)” for using the sniper rifle on it.
COD4 ownz