Wizards of the Coast gaming head says Baldur's Gate 3 'certainly raised the bar' and changed how they think about big budget D&D, but they still want 'different entry points' including smaller games
Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast senior vice president of digital games Dan Ayoub said that we won't have to wait too long to see what the company has in store for D&D. In an interview with PC Gamer, I asked him just what that meant—did "soon" in fact mean sometime in 2025?
"Definitely," he told me.
While I couldn't lure Ayoub into saying the words "Baldur's Gate 4" in our interview, we did talk about the impact Baldur's Gate 3 has had on the company's future plans for videogame adaptations of D&D. It has made an impact—a big one—but Wizards is clearly looking to adapt the tabletop game in more forms than giant, systemic RPGs like Larian's.
"It certainly raised the bar in a really, really big way," Ayoub said. "It certainly changed the way we look at our big expressions of the game. But I think we want to have different entry points for people, and hopefully generally the expectations for a smaller indie title are not the same as for a BG3.
I'll speak for myself: I was excited about BG3 for a lot of reasons, but I think it showed people what's possible in that universe. I've been playing D&D almost my whole life and it's probably why I make videogames today. I've been so excited to make D&D videogames here, so I think we can do some tremendous things with D&D."
Wizards currently has a number of games in development both internally and with partners, though the one we know is specifically D&D-related is from Invoke Studios in Montreal. Some other projects, including a planned big-budget D&D game being developed by Hidden Path Entertainment, were canceled in 2023.
"Whatever we do, we want to be diligent: we want to make sure whatever we're doing, we're executing to the best possible quality," Ayoub said. "That's for stuff we're doing ourselves or with partners. We don't want to just throw games out there—Baldur's Gate kind of raised expectations and hopes of what these things can be, so whatever we do around D&D we want to make sure it's well thought-out, well executed, and just a great player experience at the end of the day."
I asked Ayoub if Wizards has any plans to remaster or rerelease some of the back catalog of D&D games, like, say, Eye of the Beholder, but like the seasoned level 20 studio executive he is, he stayed right on message: "I really look forward to talking about some of our plans around D&D," he said with a laugh.