Yep, it's right between half & two thirds, and I was waffling, changed it a couple of times, and left out the 'two.'
....just doesn't do to make a careless error like that when correcting someone else's careless error!
Sorry I didn't notice that was Morrus, I've edited my post, above...
Yeah: "“It’s a special time, and I have a big belief that people are really craving face-to-face connections,” he said. “Gaming is the perfect construct.”
As a result, 2017 was “the biggest” in D&D’s 44-year history, Stewart said."
IDK about the Scare Quotes, there, but the difficulty-to-parse bits about growth & numbers came right after that. Maybe "the biggest" is in terms of number playing, or maybe it's sales (before or after inflation?), or maybe it was the fastest growth, even, "biggest" in business speak can mean a lot of different things.
But I'd have to guess the raw numbers playing. 12-15 million just seems unprecedentedly huge to me. In the past, people trying to puff up the hobby have cagily said 'millions of players' a lot, which, y'know, typically means "we're pretty sure we can round it up to 2 million."
But when you've got 10 million or 12 or 15 million, you say it!
It just feels off that people are playing, but, not, IDK playing 'deeply' enough to want a book... a group of 7 friends where one DMs and he's the only one who buys books, sure, it happens, but the disconnect between selling 750k books, and having 15 million players, that's more like 20:1.
But, yes: 5e doesn't have to sell that many books to turn a profit, and even if it did sell that many, it wouldn't be a whole lot of money, not compared to getting people to go see a D&D movie the way they go to Marvel movies, or whatever they're hoping for.
The 'freeloaders' still generate buzz for the /brand/, even if not revenues for the game, but, wow, there seem to be a lot of 'em.
