Coming from Activision’s Treyarch, which will be available on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, Black Ops 6 is set in an alternate history of 1991 and follows rogue agents Troy Marshall and Frank Woods as they assemble a team of agents to take on Pantheon spores, a mysterious group that has infiltrated the CIA and targeted outsiders as traitors to the US. The game also reintroduces the fan-favorite ‘Round-Based Zombies’ mode to the franchise.

At a time when new AAA games are competing with thousands of mobile titles, MMORPGs and the never-ending ‘Fortnite’ for gamers’ attention, Bahl would of course be happy if you bought ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’ on the same day. 1, but settle for at least knowing there is a ‘Black Ops 6’.

“Obviously we want to generate revenue, but I think overall it’s just awareness of the new game coming out,” Bahl said. Variety. “That is always a focus, making ‘Black Ops 6’ the number 1 game this fall. Overall, I just want people to like the campaign and the work we do as a marketing group. I think some of the work is really innovative. Like we’re not just making a place, the Substitute appears in all these strange and different places that are really exciting. That’s what gets me excited when he’s on “Monday Night Football” doing something with Scott Van Pelt. And all of you, from my little brother to a grandparent, are saying, “I saw a ‘Black Ops 6’ commercial on ‘Monday Night Football,’ and he was chasing Scott Van Pelt with a football machine.” Of course there are hard numbers, but for me the litmus test is when we enter the cultural zeitgeist. Then we see real success.”

This Replacer character that Bahl is referring to is a figure steeped in “Black Ops” marketing narratives, which fans sorely missed when he was absent from the 2020 campaign for “Black Ops Cold War.” After reading enough responses from the community asking where the Replacer was, Bahl and his team decided that they needed to “use” this Replacer withdrawal as much as possible by putting him on billboards, on TV shows, at live events, and anywhere else they could ostensibly do something could be ‘replaced’ prior to ‘Black’. Ops 6” drop – includes an NFL quarterback.

“What we got into was that in recent years there was a statistic about Kyler Murray, the quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals, where someone went and found out that when ‘Call of Duty’ gives double XP, our experience in a weekend, he performs worse on the field,” Bahl said. “Someone did the analysis; it was very scientific and had the maps and stuff. And so we had a conversation with him and said, ‘Why don’t we go into this together and turn it into a story? Admit that you are a great quarterback, but also that you are a “Call of Duty” player.” And he did. And when we launched the Replacer campaign, the community started saying, ‘You need to replace Kyler Murray. You have to replace Kyler Murray. You should replace Kyler Murray.” And then suddenly we dropped the Kyler Murray trailer.

The replacement has not stopped in the weeks since the trailer launched. The Replacer showed up at a Los Angeles Rams football game this weekend to take over a few jobs at the stadium, including being the on-field mascot.