WotC Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's

WotC released some figures this week. I thought it would be fun to compare them to the demographics of our own little community here on EN World for the same period (2019).

WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined. For the purposes of this, I assume a fan is a person who has interacted directly with D&D in some way (played a game, bought a book, watch a stream, played a video game, etc.) A fan's a fan, however they interact with D&D!

For comparison, I'm using people who have interacted with EN World in some way -- and what we can measure is unique visitors. Obviously this isn't on the same scale (40M people is a LOT) but it doesn't matter too much for what we're doing here; they're both samples for conversation. So, let's start at the top!

• Short version: EN World skews younger, but more male than the overall D&D community.

WotC is looking at 40M fans, we're looking at 5.6M unique users (as opposed to overall visits, which numbers in the tens of millions). We get this data using Google Analytics, which provides a lot of anonymized demographic data. I can't identify any individual person with this; it merely shows the overall numbers. Our demographic data includes just under half of those 5.6M users; I don't know how WotC's data is derived. I know they do surveys from time to time, but I don't know what percentage of those 40M fans fill out those forms.

As an aside - 40 million D&D fans is awesome! We're definitely living in a golden age of tabletop gaming, and as the market leader, WotC is the entity most responsible for bringing in new gamers. Well, maybe Critical Role is, but they're playing D&D!

Age

So, the controversial data that everybody on Twitter is talking about -- the age groups. Google Analytics breaks it down a little differently to WotC's figures, so here's what we have. GA doesn't give stats on people under 18 years of age. The figures below are those GA has data on for EN World -- obviously that's only about half of overall users.

Age​	Numbers​	Percentage​
18-24	592,401 users	24.58%
25-34	1,309,373 users	54.33%
35-44	330,755 users	13.46%
45-54	138,372 users	5.74%
55-64	26,689 users	1.11%
65+	12,631 users	0.52%

As you can see, the figures aren't as evenly distributed as WotC's. There's a significant number of 25-34 year-olds, and a higher number of 18-24 year-olds. Also, it shows people above the age of 45, who don't appear in WotC's stats.

• We show a slightly higher percentage of people 34 or under (79% compared to WotC's measure of 74%) although we're not measuring people under 18, which would skew it younger if we were.
• 26% of WotC's audience is over 25, while only 20% of EN World's is.
• 7.37% of EN World's audience is over 45.
• Under 18s are not included in the stats.
• EN World skews younger than the D&D community overall.

For comparison, here are WotC's figures.

I've turned them into a quick and dirty bar graph. The number of players increases slowly from 8 up until age 35, peaking at ages 30-34, and then it starts to drop off sharply. That's the same age that the drop-off on EN World's readership takes place, too. Seems about 30 is peak age.

And here are those same figures in absolute numbers -- 10% of 40,000,000 people is a LOT of people!

Age​	Percentage​	Numbers​
8-12	12%	4.8 million
13-17	13%	5.2 million
18-24	15%	6 million
25-29	15%	6 million
30-34	19%	7.6 million
35-39	15%	6 million
40-45	11%	4.4 million

Gender

The gender demographics here skew much more male than WotC's stats do. Google Analytics shows male and female (it doesn't track non-binary people) and reports on under half of overall users (2.3M out of 5.6M total).

Of those, it reports 85.56% male, 14.44% female. It doesn't provide data on non-binary visitors.

Geography

WotC's report shows that Europe is growing for them. As a European (at least geographically!) that's heartwarming news for me. So here's some figures on EN World's geographical distribution.

As you can see, it skews primarily English-speaking heavily, which is expected for an English-language community.

United States	3,376,839 users	59.14%
United Kingdom (yay!)	478,217 users	8.38%
Canada	411,179 users	7.2%
Australia	198,922 users	3.48%
Brazil	125,682 users	2.2%
Germany	109,248 users	1.91%
Italy	95,682 users	1.68%
Netherlands	74,139 users	1.3%
Sweden	51,479 users	0.9%
Spain	47,096 users	0.82%

The list goes on for pages, but we're under 1% now.

The average EN World reader is male, American, between 25-34.

 

[ddaley]

Well, like I said earlier, these things are samples, not censuses. I don't know what their market research data collection methods are, but standard market research techniques of the general population for sampling purposes would easily take those into account.

Well, regardless... I am just happy to see the entire RPG industry doing well. I am also glad to see my kids and their friends get into D&D and enjoy it the way I did back in the 80s. It's a win all around.

 

[noko]

Not just probably. It’s a fraction of one percent. To most people, the forum aspect isn’t the thing; the news page is.

Huh. That's all fine but are you able to look at those posting in the forum alone, leaving aside lurkers? Get a look at the traffic through your site, I mean.

 

[Reynard]

The thing I like best about this thread is how it shows that folks will continue to tout unsupported ideas of how things work even when they are presented directly with first party information that proves those ideas wrong.

Humans are weird.

 

[ccooke]

The thing I like best about this thread is how it shows that folks will continue to tout unsupported ideas of how things work even when they are presented directly with first party information that proves those ideas wrong.

Humans are weird.

Was this unexpected? :-D

 

[noko]

Ah, those were the days....



Why? Guys weren't intimidated by the giant muscly barbarians with greatswords, why should girls have been intimidated by the floating glowing sorceresses with slinky silk nightgowns and plunging decolletage? This is fantasy wish-fulfillment; if it gives you an inferiority complex, then you're viewing it through the exact opposite of the intended lens.



Disagree completely.



Sensible adventuring clothes are a bit boring IMO, but I can buy that gritty realism can improve immersion for some people, so that's fine. But "of different body types"? This is a game that mostly revolves around physical challenges. People who are morbidly obese don't belong in dungeons, I'm sorry but it's true. Unless you're a wizard who somehow got to fifth level and started casting Fly, without ever having to go out into the dangerous wilderlands in search of adventure (possibl,e, but distinctly unlikely), then you can't even get down the stairs into some undead-filled crypt, let alone cross chasms in the Underdark on a narrow stone bridge that threatens to dramatically collapse at the last moment.

And quite frankly, I don't want to see unattractive people all over my D&D picture-books. Those craepy halflings in the PHB are bad enough. Once again, this is fantasy wish-fulfillment. The Rule of Cool is more important than people who have insecurities or mental health problems (and I say that as someone who's been in therapy for five years to treat his depression and anger issues). If you feel ostracized by D&D, there are a billion other hobbies you can choose from. Get over yourself, you're not entitled to walk into an existing hobby community and force it to conform with your preferences, any more than you're allowed to walk into an NFL Football league and turn all their uniforms pink because you think it's prettier. If you did that, you'd be cheesing off every existing fan by destroying something they love and you don't, and they'd absolutely have the right to be furious with you.

Why? Because it was dumb that's why. If I'm heading out to battle I am not wearing a tiny whisp of chainmail that barely covers the milk bar. It's dumb-looking and not cool for females wanting to be adventurers. The muscle-bound guy pictures came across as an awful lot of wishful compensation. Females with enormous breasts have considerable balance and visibility issues (can't see the feet and all that). Really, It's all to be blamed on Frankzetta covers but it was definitely a thing for a female player to have to try and look past back in the day. You are not entitled to not let others into the gaming community and keep salacious pictures on the wall when the "No Girlz Allowed" sign is down. Tack up all the old pictures in your own house all you want. Or, alternatively, learn to draw, it's fun.

 

[Burnside]

Anecdotally: I am a 44-year-old white guy in New York City. I currently run multiple tables. We usually play in person but during the pandemic all but one game has been able to move online (see below).

My players in group 1:
3 female, 2 male. All in their 40s. 4 white, 1 Asian-American.

My players in group 2:
6 female, 1 male. All 20s-30s. 5 white, 1 Asian-American, 1 African-American.

My players in group 3:
2 female, 4 male. All early 20s college students. 1 white, 1 Asian-American, 4 Latinx. (Note: this is the ONLY group that has not been able to continue our game online during the pandemic because several of the players are from under-privileged backgrounds and do not have access to reliable hi-speed internet at home. As a result, this game is on hiatus).

Group 4 (I'm a player)
DM is a white guy in his 40s. Players are 2 female, 2 males (including me). 3 white, 1 Latinx, all 30s-40s.

So my in-person experience is that a majority of my regular players are female, a majority are white but there is still racial diversity present, and age range is 20s-40s. Of the wider circle of players with whom I play D&D occasionally, the racial and age breakdown is consistent with this; there are also 2 non-binary players and DMs I've gamed with over the past year.

However, the breakdown of players who I play with that are likely to post on ENWorld or other D&D boards/groups and really get involved in any online discussions of the game is quite different. Specifically, of the players and DMs listed above, I would say that the only ones who do that are me, one white guy in his 40s, one white guy in his 30s, and one Latina woman in her 30s. I don't think it would even occur to most of the rest of them that talking about D&D on a message board would be a thing they'd ever want to do - and for the people in their 20s, I suspect many of them don't use any message boards at all.

 

[noko]

Show me any proof of all this that doesn't rely on poorly-constructed surveys of people's subjective opinions. Has anyone found a woman who, having grown up in some rural community and thus not been indoctrinated with liberal philosophies by the university system, is hooked up to a brainscan so that you can measure the actual neurological impact of showing them a few D&D books, and actually documented whether they suddenly feel ashamed of themselves because they looked at pretty pictures created by the "male gaze"? I think that, absent that guilt-based "education", most people would not automatically have that negative reaction, that impulse to immediately feel inferior because they saw an example of something superior in a piece of FICTION. Most ordinary people would have better things to do with their time than even play D&D, let alone sit around analyzing what it supposedly symbolizes.

I'm tired of bored, sheltered college students, who are furloughed from their already part-time jobs as baristas, sitting around and crapping all over a hobby that wouldn't be making so much money if there weren't so many people with too damned much free time on their hands. It exists because of them, it's trying to pander to them, and they're never satisfied, all they can do is complain about it and try to destroy it. Nobody can come down from their elevated ego long enough to recognize "this isn't for me" and move on, let other people enjoy what they like, and stop trying to control things which aren't any of their business.

Paff That's the sound of my hand hitting my forehead.

 

[noko]

Wait, did you just make a blanket statement about how all of "today's girls" just have incorrect opinions about what they like? Like, women just can't know for themselves what they want to see in art, because they have been trained wrong, and can't possibly have thought this out themselves or actually know their own feelings on the matter unless someone tells them what to think?

There is nothing wrong with sexy art, but my rpg books-- especially the older ones-- are littered with a lot of unsexy men, and a bunch of lingerie clad jailbait women. Honestly, the genders often don't look like they belong to the same game system or art direction.

Or species.

 

[darjr]

WotC has repeatedly said what a D&D fan is. I’ll try and dig up quotes but don’t count on it. And older edition fans definitely count.

 

[Parmandur]

I have a stack of D&D material that was published before WotC even existed... if I were still playing from the material, would I not be a D&D fan?

As it turns out, I personally play 5e and got 3 kids into 5e who in turn got their friends into 5e... so, I am personally represented in both sets of statistics. I am just playing devil's advocate here.

So, a 40+ player who has directly led to three younger players, and perhaps 5+ other younger players indirectly...perhaps generational growth can account for the 1 in 9 spread?

Remember guys, the game itself isn't even 50+ years old yet, we're only getting into the second full generation now.