Statistics come in many forms, some more useful than others. Marketing snippets need to be taken with a grain of salt, especially given that your post is entitled "Is D and D entering a new Golden Age?"
As I review your evidence, I am especially keyed in on anything related to how well D and D 5e is doing as a
market share compared to D and D in the 70s and early 80s, when it sure seemed like D and D was huuuuuge as a market share of hobby gaming. Back then it was pretty much wargaming (Avalon Hill and SPI), D and D, and miniatures – also no real video or computer strategy gaming to speak of. People – ordinary people – knew about D and D (and didn’t really think you mean
World of Warcraft,
League of Legends, or something else).
So my initial gut feeling is that heck no, we are not in a Golden Age – it doesn’t at all feel the same way. But lets see if your evidence contradicts my life experience:
Sales of the hobby game market are on the rise, with tabletop role-playing games increasing along with other tabletop games. With
a new Wizards of the Coast CEO in place who values
Dungeons & Dragons as much as
Magic: The Gathering and a movie on the horizon, we're starting to see signs that D&D is doing very well indeed.
The Hobby Market is Doing Well
ICv2 reported that the hobby market is hitting
eye-popping numbers:
Sales of hobby games in the U.S. and Canada topped $1.4 billion in 2016....... That’s a 21% total growth rate over 2015, with rates of change ranging from 17% for the slowest-growing category to 29% for the fastest-growing. Growth rates were pulled higher by more rapid growth of hobby games in the mass channel, especially in collectible, board, and card & dice games.
OK - so according to the data Morrus posted
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?563442-How-big-s-the-RPG-market, rpgs
as an industry only constitute 3% of the total sales of hobby games in the U.S. and Canada. So the fact that the hobby game industry
overall grew may or may not mean growth for rpgs and/or D and D.
Of those categories, collectible games grew the most, followed by hobby board games and role-playing games. Role-playing games increased the most, by 29%, from $35 million to $45 million. Of the
top five RPGs,
Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and
Pathfinder retained their first and second position, respectively.
So here we seem to have something solid - a 29% increase in RPG sales with D and D being the highest selling RPG......... Or do we? How much of the RPG market share is D and D? If it is 70%, then clearly any such massive upward tick would indicate D and D is also growing, but what if D and D were only 20% of the market? What if the number 3 RPG is responsible for the growth?
Furthermore, while growth is better than no growth, everything is relative. Even if D and D itself grew by 40% in the last year, what does that mean as far as market share compared to the 80s?
Ancillary RPG markets are doing well too,
like non-collectible miniatures. Non-collectible miniature sales were up from $175 million to $205 million, a 17% increase.
Star Wars X-Wing led the charge, followed by
Warhammer 40K and
D&D's Nolzur's Marvels Minis, high-quality unpainted miniatures produced by Wizkids.
Unsurprisingly, Hasbro is benefiting from this bump.
Hasbro's Games Are Doing Well
Hasbro topped $5 billion in revenue
for the first time:
Net revenues for the full-year 2016 increased 13% to $5.02 billion versus $4.45 billion in 2015. Excluding a negative $61.0 million impact from foreign exchange, 2016 revenues increased 14%. As reported net earnings for the full-year 2016 increased 22% to $551.4 million, or $4.34 per diluted share, compared to $451.8 million, or $3.57 per diluted share in 2015. Adjusted net earnings for the full-year 2016 were $566.1 million, or $4.46 per diluted share. Adjusted 2016 earnings exclude a pre-tax $32.9 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, non-cash fourth quarter goodwill impairment charge related to Backflip Studios. Adjusted full-year 2016 net earnings compares to 2015 adjusted net earnings of $445.0 million, or $3.51 per diluted share, which exclude a pre-tax gain of $9.6 million from the sale of the Company's manufacturing operations in East Longmeadow, MA and Waterford, Ireland.
Hasbro gaming increased by 23%,
reflecting the hobby games market trends:
Hasbro's total gaming category, including all gaming revenue, most notably MAGIC: THE GATHERING and MONOPOLY, totaled $518.7 million for the fourth quarter 2016, up 11%, and $1,387.1 million, up 9%, for the full year 2016. Hasbro believes its gaming portfolio is a competitive differentiator and views it in its entirety.
So: The company that owns D and D is doing well….or, then again, maybe it means they are sucking 23% less than last year – who knows? I guess I would have to know more about what constitutes good and bad profit levels in the industry, what their market share is, etc. But more importantly, how the heck can you argue that data shows anything at all about how D and D itself is doing??
Note that last sentence. Hasbro experienced a decline in
Magic: The Gathering sales, and it's likely the leadership team was eager to share other good news in its gaming segment. That would turn out to be beneficial for D&D.
D&D is Doing Well
Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner did something unusual -- he mentioned
Dungeons & Dragons on an investor call. For years, D&D has been overshadowed by
Magic: The Gathering's success when Hasbro reported out Wizards of the Coast's wins to investors. The shout-out alone on the Q1 investor call
says something about D&D's success:
I also am very happy to see very strong growth for brands like DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and Duel Masters. So, the team at (46:34) has gone to a new storytelling modality for MAGIC and, obviously, impacted the quarter. But they've also done some very good work around DUNGEONS and storytelling and in engagement with that audience. So overall, I would expect that our face-to-face gaming business will continue to perform at a high level and the team's done an absolutely stellar job at both the social media oriented games, as well as some more of our classic games.
So they don’t want to talk about Magic or Monopoly, and DO want to talk about D and D and DuelMasters. Therefore its likely that D and D is doing well compared to its other products – and since Hasbro experienced 23% growth, I agree D and D likely showed growth. But growth from what numbers to what numbers? And to what kind of market share? And how does that market share compare to the 70s/80s?
Hasbro seems to have a renewed interest in what they term "face-to-face" and "social" games, thanks to its launch of the Hasbro Gaming Crate that focuses on
getting people to play together -- a staple of D&D. This is of course Wizards of the Coast's specialty. Investors are noticing.
So they are promoting a playstyle compatible with one of its games? lol of course they are. No statistics here to help the Golden Age question.
Jim Cramer on
Mad Money led the segment with an old D&D commercial and mentioned the RPG along with
Star Wars as brands that allow Hasbro to "bring imagination to life." Cramer interviewed Goldner,
who had some nice things to say about D&D:
...and our games business, a raft of great games. Dungeons & Dragons up 50%, Monopoly was of course up, and then of course Magic: The Gathering was up. So great strength in games, 6% growth, 20% growth in the gaming category overall...both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons are on our Twitch programming... Dungeons & Dragons did a very special Twitch channel that they launched with the fans. We've had millions of views on Twitch around Dungeons & Dragons. We're seeing the brand really in resurgence.
OK this is the weakest eveidence of all. How many views do other games get? What constitutes a view? Does it include peeps redirected there or only people seeking it out? This all marketing spin mumbo jumbo, nothing to be relied on for evidence of anything really other than “
D and D is doing well for Hasbro and is growing.”
(Btw, my earlier conclusion D and D probably had experienced growth was right – 50% - but again FROM what numbers TO what numbers? and to what market share?)
So what does this mean for the future of D&D?
The Future of D&D
D&D's demographics have shifted,
according to the Daily News, with more female and older players:
While Wizards of the Coast, which manages the D&D franchise, won't share sales figures, reps tell the Daily News that Millennials (ages 25 to 34) presently make up the largest group of D&D players, followed closely by those aged 35 to 44 and 18 to 24 — and up to 30% of these gamers are girls.
More underwhelming “data.” I could have told you women are 30%-ish of the RPGing world….so what? Why is this good vs. bad?
The success of
Pathfinder, the Old School Renaissance, mainstream fantasy media, and the nostalgia of gamer kids reaching the 35 to 44 age range in creative fields like movies and television is likely a major factor in the renewed interest in D&D.
Todd Kenreck explains on Forbes:
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won 11 Oscars in 2004. 16 million people watched the premiere of season 7 of Game of Thrones this year. A serious interest in cinematic fantasy storytelling has steadily reached a fevered pitch and with the game D&D itself seeing a tremendous resurgence, this the perfect time for a Dungeons & Dragons movie or series that puts acting and story first. Like comic books before them, D&D the role-playing game is filled with stories, art, characters and world building that have been largerly left unused by television or film...The game has had impact on so many of the writers, actors, directors and show-runners making television and film today that is might not be a matter of if, but when.
Will Joe Manganiello
pull off a film that does D&D justice? A confluence of events -- the rise of social gaming, nostalgia for D&D, and the increasing accessibility of the D&D brand thanks to live streaming -- might be the perfect time for him to pull it off.
Pointing to the fact that something *might* happen (a D and D film) does not constitute evidence of a Golden Age, needless to say.
So I didn’t see anything evidence-wise that actually pointed to a D and D Golden Age in the original post, so lets look at numbers posted elsewhere:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?579618-D-amp-D-5e-nearing-800-000-copies-sold indicates that 800,000 copies of 5e D and D book(s) were sold in the last 3 years. Lets compare to this:
So 750,000 per year in 1984, adjusted upward 33% for population growth, means the today equivalent of 1 million copies a year, compared to 5e’s 270,000 per year. That’s 37% of 1e. Not exactly Golden Age-esque, right? Furthermore, although I don’t have market share analysis data to share, I can tell you that the rpg share of the US/Canada Hobby Gaming market in 1984 was much higher than the 3% it is currently – my guess is that it constituted 25% conservatively. PLUS there was much less video/ computer gaming than now, so the market share of D and D within the combined hobby/gaming industry was MUCH higher than its current 1.2%, – my guess again is that it constituted 25% conservatively.
Put those numbers together and you find D and D 1e was
500 times as much a portion of the combined 1984 hobby/video gaming as 5e is today. And that squares pretty well with how it felt living thru it. There’s really no comparison and it REALLY is demeaning to the legacy of D and D to call this iteration anything of the sort.
Here’s what I think is fair to say about 5e: it is profitable, growing, and is doing much better than 4e. To be fair I think it would be impossible for any current day RPG to have anywhere remotely close to the impact D and D had in its heyday, there are just too many more appealing genres available to the modern gamer.
To borrow and pervert a Lloyd Bensen line: "
Sir, I grew up with D and D. I experienced the Golden Age of D and D. I lived the Golden Age. And Sir, let me tell you: this ain't no Golden Age for D and D."
