Is D&D Entering a New Golden Age?

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.

Picture courtesy of Unsplash.​

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, reaching $1.44 billion, according to a new estimate compiled by ICv2 and reported in Internal Correspondence #92. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Jester David]

Uhhhh....Lumping gamers together (video games and hobby games) is indeed more valid than lumping in sports. Sorry.

Why? Sports are literally games. There is NO difference.
In fact, as team activities with written rulebooks, there are far more similarities between sports than single-player videogames.

D and D used to (in the early 80s) be a BIG game in the entire gaming industry!!!!!!

Define "gaming industry". Because if you mean board games, then D&D was CRUSHED by games like Monopoly even then. Monopoly sells something like a couple million boards... every year. And that's just one of best selling board games, which include Clue; Mouse Trap; Hungry, Hungry Hippos; Operation; the Game of Life; Battleship; etc. That last one even ended up being made into a $200 million dollar movie.

So, no, D&D never (repeat NEVER) was the big game in the gaming industry. It was always just the big fish in "hobby gaming".

THAT was the Golden Age. You could walk down the street and ask a random person if he knew about D and D and if he knew someone who played it, and he's probably say yes on both counts.

Do you have any evidence to support your claim that random people on the street knew of D&D?
Do you think D&D is somehow less well known now and that the people who heard of D&D will have someone forgotten it?

Plus... how does that equate with a golden age? People knowing about something doesn't mean what they know is true, that they're buying the books, or the hobby is doing well.

MANY D and D and D and D-like movies came out ANNUALLY.

Many fantasy movies between 1981 and 1984?
Name them.

One of the biggest coalitions on the planet at that time, the religious right, came out against D and D and it was Big News.

Given the satanic panic of the time, it seems that while D&D was well known by name, what it actually was about was not very well known.

It doesn't look like you were born until the 80s (from your profile), so I can understand your difficulty in understanding my point. But I lived thru D and D's Golden Age. There was a buzz about. Ordinary people in all walks of life knew about the game and had an opinion about it. It wasn't just the top dog in a nigh-irrelevant niche market.

1979.
I wanted the D&D Cartoon on TV when it first aired and knew older kids that played. I was very well aware of D&D, but had very little concept of what an "RPG" was until the '90s.
I can look back at the knowledge of D&D when I was little. And in the '90s. And in the 2000s. And in the 2010s. And now. And D&D seems much more well known and recognised by geeky people than any time I can remember.

While D&D is getting less mainstream buzz - which back then was more negative - it seems like more people now are actually playing the game. So instead of being that thing people are talking about in confused whispers of Satan, it's that game that is selling copies and enjoying.

 

[Jester David]

Do you think RPGs consisted of only 3% of the hobby gaming industry back then?

Apples and oranges. Hobby games back then consisted of RPGs and miniature wargames. Collectable Card games, collectable miniature games, deckbuilding games, and eurogames didn't exist then.

That doesn't mean D&D isn't making more or less money or its player base is smaller. We literally cannot compare since it's impossible to know how D&D 1e would have done compared to Magic the Gathering. That could be additive: had MtG launched in 1979 instead of the mid-1990s, perhaps there would have been a D&D boom AND a MtG boom, since the games appeal to different audiences. The entire industry might have grown rather than D&D shrinking.

Do you think that the hobby gaming industry back then had a competitor (for GAMERS) like the video game industry that was almost 100 times larger than the hobby gaming industry at the time?

You keep defining "gamers" as both RPG players and video gamers equally, when that's really, really not the case. Not anymore than it would be to include people who played board or card games...

There's a whole lot of video game players who would have zero interest in RPGs. The best selling video games are sports games and military first person shooters. The average fan of Call of Duty, Halo, Madden 20XX, Grand Theft Auto, or Minecraft might have very little interest in D&D.

Do YOU think today's D and D is as big a deal to gamers in the USA today as it was in the 80s?

I think had video games and other hobby games never really taken off, the number of D&D players right now would not significantly increase.
The ratio of D&D compared to other industries increasing or shrinking doesn't change the number of people playing D&D or the visibility of D&D.

 

[cmad1977]

Is D&D Entering a New Golden Age?

Video gamers and table top gamers are different groups. Completely different methods of engagement.



But I do love the sweet sweet tears of frustration some shed when faced with 5e's success.


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[shoak1]

Video gamers and table top gamers are different groups. Completely different methods of engagement.



But I do love the sweet sweet tears of frustration some shed when faced with 5e's success.

You guys are a marketing directors dream. Just say something like "over x copies sold" and u guys literally fall all over yourselves giddy patting each other on the back. OK, I'll let you have your moment in the sun - 5e is the top dog in a 3% genre of the hobby game family which is a fraction of 1% of the size of the video game industry. Woot Woot lets take a ride on the Golden Age Express

 

[Hussar]

You guys are a marketing directors dream. Just say something like "over x copies sold" and u guys literally fall all over yourselves giddy patting each other on the back. OK, I'll let you have your moment in the sun - 5e is the top dog in a 3% genre of the hobby game family which is a fraction of 1% of the size of the video game industry. Woot Woot lets take a ride on the Golden Age Express

Thing is, this has always been true. Hobby games have never been a huge market.

Even back in the 80's, as big as D&D was, it was still a tiny niche hobby.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Thing is, this has always been true. Hobby games have never been a huge market.

Even back in the 80's, as big as D&D was, it was still a tiny niche hobby.

AFAICT, ICv2 made up the Hobby Games category relatively recently. In the 80s there were no CCGs, which instantly became huge - relative to RPGs, anyway - when M:tG premiered in '93. No MMOs, either - MUDs, perhaps...

If we consider what are now grouped together as hobby games - RPGs, board games, miniatures war games, and CCGs - RPGs & wargames have been tiny & niche since their inception, while CCGs have been huge throughout their brief history, and boardgames have long been mainstream.

RPGs as a market fluctuating around in the 10s of inflation-unadjusted millions is not revolutionary, but it's nice to see them closer, as a whole industry, to the 50 mil that 4e shot for and missed, than the 14 mil the industry shrank to in D&D's brief interregnum...

Quote Originally Posted by cmad1977
But I do love the sweet sweet tears of frustration some shed when faced with 5e's success
---------------------------------------------------
You guys are a marketing directors dream. Just say something like "over x copies sold" and u guys literally fall all over yourselves giddy patting each other on the back.

'You guys' can make anything negative.

Comparing potential Golden Ages takes data from both eras, something that has not been presented here by ANYONE.

In another thread Morrus kindly linked an article from the 80s that off-handedly mentioned that D&D was selling 750k books a year.
5e has apparently moved a comparable number over the last 3 years.

Respectable. Whether we call the 80s a fad and today the come-back, or get a little pretentious and say Golden and Silver Ages.

Do YOU think today's D and D is as big a deal to gamers in the USA today as it was in the 80s?

Oh, sure, and to the same gamers, too!

 

[Jester David]

You guys are a marketing directors dream. Just say something like "over x copies sold" and u guys literally fall all over yourselves giddy patting each other on the back. OK, I'll let you have your moment in the sun - 5e is the top dog in a 3% genre of the hobby game family which is a fraction of 1% of the size of the video game industry. Woot Woot lets take a ride on the Golden Age Express

It's better to just assume nothing can ever be as good as it was during a couple magical years in our late teens/ early 20s?

Okay, one last bit of data:
https://medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836

That article is written by historian Jon Peterson on the Gygax's loss of TSR. Halfway down he shows a chart on the revenue of TSR in 1982, pegging it at $22 million. And then mentioned later on that the 1983 revenue was $26.7 million.


I can already hear you saying "But when you adjust for inflation, that's less than the $45 million of the entire hobby industry!!"
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present#.Wa6gNch95aQ

Okay. That's true. The $26.7 million of 1983 - when D&D peaked - would have been $65,620,343.37!!
Wowza.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/


Except... that $65 million isn't D&D. It's TSR. As the article notes, sales of D&D books slightly declined in 1983 compared to 1982 levels, so the increase wasn't just associated with the game books. At the time TSR had a number of games (Boot Hill, Crimefighters, Metamorphosis Alpha, Top Secret, and Star Frontiers). And they had a magazine that just peaked at 100,000 copies. Plus numerous board games including Dungeon! and others.
Still... the bulk of that $65 million had to be D&D, right? While right now D&D is probably only 50-60% of the aforementioned $45 million.

Except...

The $45 million on "the chart [are] based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers." And, most importantly "these do not take into account online sales, direct sales, Amazon, or anything other than hobby retail sales. "
So the estimated $25 million that is D&D could easily be doubled. After all, the PHB is continually sitting on the Amazon top 100. Right now it's at #39 in books, but even if it were at 100 it would be selling over 8000 copies each month:
https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/

When you add in Sales from Amazon.com alone, D&D is sitting at close to $30-million for this year. And when you add in Chapters/Indigo/Borders and other points of sale it gets higher still. $35 million. Maybe $40 million.
Now, still less than what D&D was likely making in 1983. But, it's more than what D&D was making in 1981. And D&D 5e is still growing...

 

[MichaelSomething]

I'll believe D&D is big when I see Mike Mearls surrounded by groupies.

Sent from my VS990 using EN World mobile app

 

[DM Howard]

All I know is the products in those days were crap. Honestly. After Gygax, you can count on one hand (easily one hand) the number of modules worth anything. Everything in the 1e era was worth buying. I own all those modules. My purchases of 2e stuff dribbled away to nothing. So sure it is quality as well as quantity. It was also the loss of the creative genius behind D&D that didn't help matters.

Great! Your anecdotal opinion on the quality of 2e materials is just that: anecdotal. Also, you very much appear to favor modules which colors your view anyway. The facts of business still stand.

 

[Jhaelen]

I'll believe D&D is big when I see Mike Mearls surrounded by groupies.

I don't know. Record sales doesn't seem to be much of a consideration for groupies attracted to rock stars, either...

Regarding the 'factual' increase in smokers: A while ago, I read that while the absolute number of smokers has increased (worldwide), population has increased far more, resulting in a smaller overall percentage of smokers.
Also: Never trust statistics you haven't doctored yourself!

Finally: what exactly has this discussion to do with the question whether D&D is entering a new golden age? sales, whether absolute or relative only provide part of the picture. Popularity doesn't always translate directly into sales! What makes a 'golden age' golden?

Anecdotally, D&D 5e has had almost no impact for me: Here in Germany it's all either Pathfinder or older D&D editions. Personally, I believe a big part of the reason is the lack of a German translation of D&D 5e products. (Although I vaguely remember this may have changed recently or is about to change - we'll see if it's still in time to change anything.)