Your point is that BG is a 20 year old game / DnD is a game from the 70s and people don't know about 20 year video games much less 50 year old table top games unless you are part of niche market. I also think you are saying that because I played the original that my perspective is skewed. Am I right?
No, I am not saying that, otherwise I would include myself in that particular skew given I also played those games. I am saying that because you are likely part of communities where D&D is a part of the sub culture, your perspective is skewed. Mine is probably skewed in the other direction, given that I live somewhere on the continent of Africa and I am pretty much the only person I know IRL who even remotely interacts with this kind of media. The only way I can interact with people who have similar interests is...online. If you were to do a survey in my local community, I would probably be the only person who has ever even heard of D&D. The big brands however, are still here. You can still find merchandise for Star Wars, or Mickey Mouse.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
I'm saying that there are somethings before my time that have become well known. Canonical. Part of geek culture. I know about Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Metropolis, Dracula, Frankenstein, the creature from the Black Lagoon, Spaceballs and a whole list of things are that before my time because they have become part of the culture. I think as many people know about DnD as know about Star Wars. I think more people know about Baldur's Gate than know about Fallout.
And I get that's just, like, my opinion man but without data what else do we have?
Whilst some things may be a "part of geek sub cultures" they aren't all equal. We can almost certainly say that D&D is not equal to Star Wars in terms of brand awareness, given that Star Wars is valued at close to 70 Billion and WotC (not D&D, the entire of WotC including MtG) is valued at close to 10 billion.
Here is another interesting chart to look at. It shows the interest on Google over time in various search terms. Baldur's Gate does not even show on the chart thats how low the interest is in comparison. I would like to note that this is a very inaccurate method of comparing interesting in topics as some topics will have much higher online interest than real life interest (I specifically included World of Warcraft there to illustrate this), but it is still interesting to look at.
