D&D General Some Interesting Stats About D&D Players!

The full cover spread for Phandelver and Below, by Antonio José Manzanedo​

GeekWire has reported on the recent D&D press event (which I've covered elsewhere). Along with all the upcoming product information we've all been devouring over the last day or two, there were some interesting tidbits regarding D&D player demographics.

• 60% of D&D players are male, 39% are female, and 1% identify otherwise
• 60% are “hybrid” players, who switch between playing the game physically or online
• 58% play D&D on a weekly basis
• 48% identify as millennials, 19% from Generation X and 33% from Generation Z
• The majority of current D&D players started with 5th Edition

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, there isn't. But D&D isn't just WotC's current customers, and if they were in presenting it as such, I will persist in requesting more honest information from them. It's really not hard, just say that this survey provides the following results from among our customer base. Say that and I'm done. I hate when companies say hazy, pithy things to the public.

You are an extremely loud and proud ex-customer. They are as worried about wooing you back as they are raising dead customers from the grave.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are an extremely loud and proud ex-customer. They are as worried about wooing you back as they are raising dead customers from the grave.

I don't expect they care. That would be mighty arrogant of me. But they are misrepresenting themselves and I won't let it go unchallenged.

 

[mamba]

D&D is a group activity, so there isn't necked a 1-to-1 between book sales and players.

that is true for any edition, I would have assumed the ration for 1e and 2e is about the same, so 2e selling half the copies but having more players starting with it is odd to me

There could be several reasons that originally 2E players outnumberpeople who started with 1E or Basic, but the telling thing is, coming from WotC directly, it's a pretty frank admission of problems with Editions that Crawford and Perkins actually worked on for WotC. Which is probably not something they meant to let slip.

if this is from WotC directly (and not something the article misinterpreted) then yes, it shows that 3e and 4e were struggling

 

[mamba]

Those 1E and Basic players stopped playing, while the 2E folks did not.

the statement says nothing about who kept playing and who did not. It said ' 2E AD&D remained the dominant "I started playing" version' until 5e. So fewer people started with 1e, 3e, or 4e

If 1e had more than 2e, then the statement in itself would be a weird way to phrase this to me, 3e and 4e definitely could not have had more than 2e. And this still has to account for players upgrading from 1e to 2e, which reduces the number of players starting with 2e.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There is no way I can believe of all D&D players of all editions, less than 1% are over ~56yo if the generation before them are still at 19%. I could maybe believe 2%. But less than 1% heavily hints to it being only 5e.

Why wouldn't Gen-X outnumber Boomers, though? GenX is exactly the right age to have discovered D&D in their early teens (as most people do) because it existed then, and Boomers were already older. The game was invented by Boomers, but the game itself had its very first BOOM with GenX. And it's had more booms since then.

I can't imagine why it would be a surprise that Boomers, while certainly playing the game, would be a minority. And a small one. Doesn't mean they're not welcome!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I am surprised because Hasbro is not selling more toys for childrens based in D&D, and the action figures of the characters from the action-live movie were for collectors, too expensive to be bought as gifts for children.

The books not only can be shared by friends, but also by members of the same family. D&D is the game used by older players to start playing with the next generation. You aren't going to play with your children World of Darkness or Call of Chulthu.

Hasbro would rather WotC working as a "laboratory of ideas", adding elements to the franchise.

Maybe I have said in the past really the main goal by Hasbro is not the TTRPG market, but the videogames and media productions.

 

[codo]

What about the Gen X-ers? I'll bet they and Boomers together represent a lot more than 19% of the people on this site.

On this site sure. "Kids these days" don't look at forums anymore. All of there discussions is on Reddit, Discord, and probably somewhere else I am to old to even know about. The last thing kids want when discussing their hobbies is to hang out with people the age of their grandparents.

 

[mamba]

On this site sure.

Not according to the published statistics

Another Year of EN World Demographics!

As I did last year, this is a look at EN World's demographics. This period is June 2020 to June 2021. The data reflects over 5M unique visitors and tens of millions of page views. The short version -- over the last year, the user base has become younger, and (slightly: 3%) less male. The average...

www.enworld.org

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Kids these days" don't look at forums anymore. All of there discussions is on Reddit, Discord, and probably somewhere else I am to old to even know about.

TikTok, which barely gets a mention on this site.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I am surprised because Hasbro is not selling more toys for childrens based in D&D, and the action figures of the characters from the action-live movie were for collectors, too expensive to be bought as gifts for children.

You're mistaken that the toys were made for collectors, or more accurately - that's just how much toys cost these days, kids or not. Toys are horribly expensive to produce compared to even 5 years ago. Like astronomically. The toys that I've seen (& a few that I've sold) were in line with what toys cost now. (Which is HORRIBLY EXPENSIVE, I agree!)