D&D 5E New ORR Group numbers - 5e at 49.10%

[Irda Ranger]

It's amazing what listening to your customers and doing a whole lot of playtesting can do.

5E is a great game. I can't imagine running any previous edition now, but what really boggles my mind is how similar the design team was for 4E and 5E. Great designers, but it just goes to show that great design cannot sell a game that isn't what (most) people want to play.

Anyway, congrats to the whole team at Wizards. They really did a great job and deserve the success.

 

[dave2008]

For comparison:

http://blog.roll20.net/post/143493281735/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2016

From this time last year (since it'd be as impacted by the same holidays and such).

19,000 more games and 25,000 more gamers! Looks like Pathfinder increased by 1,300 games and Star Wars by 100. 3.5e, 4e, and World of Darkness all dropped by a couple hundred games.
But the big winner is 5e D&D. While "Other" increased by 200 and "Other Listed" by 2,200 D&D increased by 15,600 games. So of the new games added in the past year, something like 80% were for 5e! That's staggering.

Just look at the past quarter:
http://blog.roll20.net/post/156907010215/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2016
In the last four months, D&D jumped by 5000 games and 3% of the games played.

Thank you for sharing!

Now please tell me how you were able to prevent the image from double posting (see the OP - I am having the same issue)!

Sorry for the rant!

 

[dave2008]

The percentage increased drastically once they became an official licensee for D&D and were able to start selling the official D&D adventures (same as what happened when Fantasy Grounds did). I'm not sure we should read anything more than that into it.

It would be interesting to see stats from an independent VTT.

Good point.

Now Morrus, can you tell me why pasted images are double posting now (see the OP). I am having this issue even when I paste the image in a spoiler tag. It hides behind the spoiler and now shows up a the bottom of the post too!

PS sorry for ranting here, but I wasn't sure what the official channel for forum issues is

 

[Jester David]

Did it though? I have heard that said but I don't really see it in the numbers. I am sure it got a boost but the trajectory seems largely unchanged, would be interesting to see it graphed out.

Let's see what I can do:

Percentage

Number of Games

There is a spike in 5e, but it's in Q1 2016, months *before* the license.
And while Pathfinder is dropping in percentage, it's growing in number of games.

(I'm also pretty sure I made a typo in the Q3 2016 4e column, and missed the Q1 2017 one)

-edit-
Yeah, messed up those entries. Corrected.
Also double checked the Q4 2015 numbers. They seem correct: there was a *dip* in 5e games.

 

[guachi]

Thanks for the graph, Jester. I'd be interested to see Roll20 numbers going back several more years.

But from what you've provided it's nice to see that 5e isn't cannibalizing old games so much as it is generating new games. Lots of new games.

 

[happyhermit]

Let's see what I can do:
...

Yeah, the license was announced on July 28 2016 AFAICT, but without knowing that it would be hard to guess on those graphs. Certainly an uptick but one among several and not really changing the overall trend.

 

[LordEntrails]

It's amazing what listening to your customers and doing a whole lot of playtesting can do.

5E is a great game. I can't imagine running any previous edition now, but what really boggles my mind is how similar the design team was for 4E and 5E. Great designers, but it just goes to show that great design cannot sell a game that isn't what (most) people want to play.

Anyway, congrats to the whole team at Wizards. They really did a great job and deserve the success.

Maybe the same people, but I would say not the same game designers. I think its apparent that they learned a whole lot from 4E and so each individual is no longer the designer they used to be. They are as evidenced, better designers.

Learning from your failures will do that for you. And is often cited by many successful people as key to their success.

 

[Gradine]

Let's see what I can do...

...There is a spike in 5e, but it's in Q1 2016, months *before* the license...

...Also double checked the Q4 2015 numbers. They seem correct: there was a *dip* in 5e games...

Yeah, the trend line seems fairly stable, so I'm not even sure you could call what happened in Q1 2016 a "spike" so much as a course correction from the Q4 2015 dip. The dip is the outlier here. That lines up with Out of the Abyss's release; or possibly represents the lull between PotA and OotA?

 

[Jester David]

Thanks for the graph, Jester. I'd be interested to see Roll20 numbers going back several more years.

But from what you've provided it's nice to see that 5e isn't cannibalizing old games so much as it is generating new games. Lots of new games.

I wish I could oblige, but the first numbers were released in Q3 2014, and that only includes half the figures. I can extrapolate, but it's a little less accurate.

Here's the charts with the two quarters of 2014 included:





Turns out doing this does change things, as there's a noticeable down tick in games following the release of 5e. But not *that* much.

 

[darjr]

Could that down tick in 5e line up with the other company getting thier license?