Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is this really the consensus?

Whilst its not possible to view things from an objective perspective, you can contextualize them within a better framework (I will admit, my wording in the previous quote there was a bit bad). If you only look at D&D within the context of the direct fandom, its the only world you will ever see and so it will appear to encompass everything. But even as a fan of something, where you only personally remain within that community, its possible to "broaden your horizons" by finding metrics or measuring sticks. Hence why I brought up other brands as references. They give you a measuring stick to compare with. Another example I could use is the world. Its huge right? Its all we know and interact with. And yet for scale, this is what we know about the size of the observable universe.
And there was a reason why all of the others got turned down. You know what that reason was? Money. WotC wanted a game to advertise D&D, not the other way around. They didn't want D&D to advertise a game. Obsidian outright said they didn't get the rights to BG 3 because their publisher at the time didn't have the money for it and so the deal fell through. Sure, there will be some people who play BG 3 because it is BG 3, but the majority of the people who play BG 3 will play it because of mass marketing and not because of the brand, just like Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is actually a very good example of this. Most people now who are aware of the Fallout IP know nothing about Fallout 1 or 2, despite them being the origin of the series. Bethesda's recreation of Fallout effectively "killed" the original image created by Interplay. I would not be surprised if, within 5 to 10 years, the idea of what "Baldur's Gate" is, will have been completely replaced with Larian's new game. The image that you or I have of Baldur's Gate will be completely at odds with what the mainstream media thinks it is, because that is what is probably going to happen.

For WotC, this is not about making a faithful D&D game, its about creating brand awareness within a different market space. If you honestly believe WotC cares 1 whit about faithfulness to rules and not about their bottom line, then let me please point you to Sword Coast Legends or Neverwinter (the mmo). The OGL alone should tell you what they care about, because its not the rules. The rules are not the IP that matters to them, its the setting that makes them money.
The fact that the people who enjoy minecraft or pokemon are different to the people who enjoy BG or D:OS points out something obvious. If you are trying to market your game towards that larger audience (which, given Larian's marketing tactics, they obviously do), it means you are going to need to make adjustments to your game in order to make it more appealing towards that audience. Which is again, why Solasta and BG 3 are not an apples to apples comparison. Solasta is not trying to appeal to a broader audience, BG 3 most definitely is.
I picked LotR only because its likely you would recognize it, but its also actually not very high up on the list. There are plenty of other Fantasy series between LotR and Pokemon when it comes to generating revenue. In terms of brand awareness, think about how pervasive the merchandise for a brand is and that should give you some idea of just how valuable the brand is. Things which are basically household names are the "kings" when it comes to popularity and D&D is just not up there. Harry Potter, Micky Mouse and other brands like this are up near the top. The average person on the street knows their name. By contrast if you polled a random sample of 100 people, I would guess that only at most 1 or 2 would know what D&D is.
Baldur's Gate came out in 1998. There are people alive now, who were born after the game came out, who are old enough to drink. I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who play RPGs, have not played BG and many people (probably also the majority) have not even heard of it and that is just if we are discussing CRPGs. If we broaden it to fantasy as a whole and not just games, BG might as well not exist, because its influence is negligible next to the likes of Pratchett, Sanderson or the many other fantasy authors who have a huge influence on the genre.
The great thing about absolute statements is that they are very easy to disprove. A good friend of mine that I met 5 years ago, who is an avid fan of RPGs, had never heard of BG until BG 3 came out. Sure they had played most RPGs post 2006ish, but anything before that point in time was lost in the mists of time to them.