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.

 

[Morrus]

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

Do you remember roughly what the definition was? I assume it's "interacted with D&D in some way" or thereabouts?

 

[noko]

So I woke up to an AVALANCHE of reported posts. They were all yours. So I waded in with trepidation, and man did somebody misread the rules here and go off an an extended tirade overnight.

So, you won't be posting in this thread again. I honestly can't find the energy to explain everything that's wrong with this post, let alone a bunch of others, but it is fundamentally, and completely, antithetical to this community's values, and completely against the rules.

I mean, you’ve been here since 2013. How did you miss so widely? Were we not clear enough?

(Everybody else, Envisioner won't be able to reply, so please stop engaging with his posts).

See, that's why I have to crawl through to the end before replying, I guess.

 

[Reynard]

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.

Out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking and if you actually know, what is the LGBTQ distribution among these groups? One thing I have noticed is that with 5E D&D (and Pathfinder, with 2E) has become much more welcoming of non cishet people. My own groups are largely straight white 40-something dudes because we have been playing together a long time, but at cons and in pick up games I see more diversity.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

... One thing I have noticed is that with 5E D&D (and Pathfinder, with 2E) has become much more welcoming of non cishet people. ...

I can only speak for my own groups which, due to lots of life issues, are now on hold, that they're about 1/3 LGBTQ. But I'm guessing at that because our own sexuality/orientation/etc. seldom comes up.

My daughter, who is a lesbian, has a group 4 players plus her that has 3 LGBTQ persons in it.

What I've noticed is that she and her friends are very welcome at games stores, cons, etc. At least, that's how it appears to me.

 

[Parmandur]

One thing to also keep in mind... that's a pie chart of over 40 million people. 11% of 40 million people is fairly significant in absolute numbers.

@Morrus you've been tracking these sort of stats for a long time: how does 4.4 million 40+ folks now stand up to what WotC was saying in late 2E to 3.x times?

 

[Morrus]

One thing to also keep in mind... that's a pie chart of over 40 million people. 11% of 40 million people is fairly significant in absolute numbers.

@Morrus you've been tracking these sort of stats for a long time: how does 4.4 million 40+ folks now stand up to what WotC was saying in late 2E to 3.x times?

This massive survey from 1999 is the best data we have:

Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0

Wizards of the Coast regularly surveys various aspects of the adventure gaming channel; distributors, retailers and consumers to better understand their preferences, concerns, and needs. That data is regularly reviewed and distributed internally to senior management. The contents of this...

www.enworld.org

 

[Jester David]

So I don't know if I'm interpreting these figure right, but looking at WotC's figures. If that 40-45 demographic is supposed to be 40+, that's 11%.

So those people are the ones who were playing D&D when 3E launched, and some were posting right here on this site. They'd have been most of the audience then, and now they're just 11% of it. So one or both of two things has happened (I imagine both):

1) A lot of the audience has been lost. They stopped playing over the last 20 years, probably for a multitude of reasons (families, work, kids, changing interests, changes to the game).

2) They were more than replaced by a massive influx of younger people, people that are the age those 11% were when they were playing 20 years ago.

Now what I'd find really interesting is to know if that was the hobby in general, or is it a D&D-specific phenomenon. If we took the whole industry except for D&D, would we see the same pattern? Is it a case of older gamers dropping out of the hobby completely, and younger gamers coming in via D&D? Or are the older gamers still around but playing other games?

Someone who was 20 when 3e came out would be in that 11%, but anyone who was 18 and in college would be in the segment below. Or got into D&D 3e in the year or two after when there was a surge of new players. The 3e era is probably better covered by the 15% that is 35-39.
But it is odd that the percentage of the audience that played 1e/2e is so small.

I imagine you're partially right with #1. People drifted away from the game, found "adult" hobbies, had trouble finding groups, and got busy with work and kids and then grandkids.
Being a 40yo myself and looking for new games right now it is hard. Because I don't want to play with a bunch of awkward over-excited 15yos. (Tried a LGS and had a problematic experience.)

It might also be a sample bias. The people 40 or 50 or even 60yo are less likely to hang around game stores, get D&D Beyond accounts, frequent Facebook and the like. Many might have solid and reliable gaming groups they've been with for a decades or two of adulthood and effectively play the game invisibly.

But I think another factor is the sheer number of new players that have come in. Sales of PHBs have reportedly doubled twice in recent years and with that the audience, and that's principally in the lower demographics. Which is going to skew the data. That WotC felt the need to break-up the under-25 data into so many tiers speaks to that, rather than just having a <25 slice.
Like how every other RPG deems to be steadily declining in popularity on Roll20, when they're really growing but D&D is just growing that much faster.

 

[Morrus]

Like how every other RPG deems to be steadily declining in popularity on Roll20, when they're really growing but D&D is just growing that much faster.

Last couple of data dumps from Roll20 and FG both show the opposite for the last year or so. Other games are actually gaining a little ground (only a percent or two, but it's notably the opposite trend to just two years ago).

 

[Parmandur]

Someone who was 20 when 3e came out would be in that 11%, but anyone who was 18 and in college would be in the segment below. Or got into D&D 3e in the year or two after when there was a surge of new players. The 3e era is probably better covered by the 15% that is 35-39.
But it is odd that the percentage of the audience that played 1e/2e is so small.

I imagine you're partially right with #1. People drifted away from the game, found "adult" hobbies, had trouble finding groups, and got busy with work and kids and then grandkids.
Being a 40yo myself and looking for new games right now it is hard. Because I don't want to play with a bunch of awkward over-excited 15yos. (Tried a LGS and had a problematic experience.)

It might also be a sample bias. The people 40 or 50 or even 60yo are less likely to hang around game stores, get D&D Beyond accounts, frequent Facebook and the like. Many might have solid and reliable gaming groups they've been with for a decades or two of adulthood and effectively play the game invisibly.

But I think another factor is the sheer number of new players that have come in. Sales of PHBs have reportedly doubled twice in recent years and with that the audience, and that's principally in the lower demographics. Which is going to skew the data. That WotC felt the need to break-up the under-25 data into so many tiers speaks to that, rather than just having a <25 slice.
Like how every other RPG deems to be steadily declining in popularity on Roll20, when they're really growing but D&D is just growing that much faster.

I started with 3.0 in the early Aughts, and I'm in the next category down, 29-34, along with my whole college group. Most people I know who play are younger.

As noted above, though, the percentages are out of 50 million, so that's still millions of veterans: just also millions of middle schoolers, millions of Highschoolers, millions of College students, and millions of young adults out of college...

 

[ccooke]

But I think another factor is the sheer number of new players that have come in. Sales of PHBs have reportedly doubled twice in recent years and with that the audience, and that's principally in the lower demographics. Which is going to skew the data. That WotC felt the need to break-up the under-25 data into so many tiers speaks to that, rather than just having a <25 slice.
Like how every other RPG deems to be steadily declining in popularity on Roll20, when they're really growing but D&D is just growing that much faster.

So, there's a discussion that keeps recurring every now and then about whether 5e has outsold the original golden age.

I think - given the sales data we have - that this rather suggests it has. I mean, this certainly feels like a golden age of d&d (and, probably started already as people branch out but definitely soon, a golden age of tabletop RPG).

We might even have enough critical mass to come through the current crises without losing that.