Social media stats of big RPG brands

TrippyHippy said:

Ah, yes, but Vampire: The Masquerade has about 70,000+ likes on Facebook. The fans may be less aware of Onyx Path than the original brand names.

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Is that official or unofficial? If the former, it belongs on the list, for sure.

There are dozens of large communities for all the games I've listed. Some much more than 70K likes. I was sticking to official company accounts. To do otherwise would take days to list.

I'm measuring how much companies invest in social media, not how popular a game is.

https://www.facebook.com/vampirethemasquerade

70,661 as it stands.

And I’m not pushing it as a fan - it’s just difficult to ascertain how popular this game still is currently. Historically, of course, it had a huge impact.

Note that the ‘Official’ White Wolf page still has 19,000+ likes also - even though it’s other companies (Onyx Path; By Night studios) that actually publish these books now. (White Wolf still essentially owns Drivethrurpg.com too, as an aside).

TrippyHippy said:

And I’m not pushing it as a fan - it’s just difficult to ascertain how popular this game still is currently.

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I don't think you're reading what I'm posting. I'm not trying to ascertain how popular games are. I'm looking at how much RPG *companies* choose to use social media or not, and which social networks they choose. I'm sure your favourite game is very popular, but that's really not what this is about. This thread is about the different levels of adoption between FB, Twitter, and G+ by various companies.

If you're after popularity (sales figures aside), you could always try compiling the traffic of every fan community/group/page out there.

I am reading what you are saying. But I am also saying what *I* am interested in finding out about more.

And, Vampire: The Masquerade isn’t my favourite game - this isn’t a personal issue here.

Morrus said:

Google+

Pathfinder RPG - 1,545 followers (not sure that's official - hasn't been updated since 2011 so it might not be)

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If it hasn't been updated since 2011, that pretty much tells you that it isn't relevant for today. They might as well have zero, as they are investing *nothing* in that channel.

You might find frequency of updates to be another interesting statistic.

So here's some attempt at analysis. This is all nonsense, of course; just me playing with numbers. Also, it'll make somebody angry somewhere, because it always does, but I can't help that.

Like I mentioned, I've used official company accounts only. I haven't included Monte Cook's personal twitter feed, or Mike Mearls' or the many fan communities on Facebook or G+. This is only a measure of how companies are using social media, not how popular their games are.

Also, yes, I know other social media exists, including Reddit etc. Anyone is welcome to adjust these figures by adding other platforms in.



Total social media usage of those 7 companies for those three networks is as follows. WotC's Facebook investment skews this massively; it's also interesting to see that companies aren't using G+ much, although fans certainly are - there are some enormous unofficial G+ communities for lots of games.



Looking at the total amount of social media used by those seven companies, irrespective of platform, we get the following view. Again, this is skewed massively by WotC.



Of course, there are likely others I haven't covered. This is just a casual impression, not a scientific study. Feel free to use these figures, correct them, use them, ignore them, whatever.

A few other things I can get out of those numbers. Assuming a "follow" on FB, Twitter, and G+ are somehow equivalent...

You took totals, and then found percentages - that allows WotC's Facebook presence to dominate. You find what percentage of all channels is Facebook, and you see it is about 86%

But turn that around:

93% of WotC's followers are on Facebook. 6% are on Twitter. 1% are on G+
44% of Paizo's followers are on Facebook. 51% of them are on Twitter. 4% of them are on G+
37% of Evil Hat's Followers are on Facebook. 48% of them are on Twitter, and 14% are on G+

Instead of asking what percentage of followers are on each channel, we can instead ask what is the average company presence per channel - average the 93%, 44%, 37%, and find the average FB use that way. This treats WotC as one among peers, and gets rid of that massive overweight from their Facebook.

Then, things even out.

Companies have about 63% of their followers on Facebook, 30% of them on Twitter, and about 6% on G+. I find the roughly 101 ratio kind of an interesting coincidence.

Basically, we'd expect that WotC has put many of their chickens into their Facebook presence. But others don't lean so heavily on that channel, and spread a bit more evenly between FB and Twitter. None of them use G+ much.

That's probably more meaningful. That big WotC Facebook investment really skews everything. A little research tells me that a FB like costs, on average, $0.10 using Facebook's own ads/promotional tools.

interesting thread ...altho in fairness i think paizo in particular uses their own site far more extensively than wotc (most paizo/pathfinder customers are directly engaged with the site...buying products, on messageboards etc...). whereas wotc is going with the 'branding' model-and they have had phenomenal success with the books-the main wotc site however is at present a shell (little if any content...so wotc customers may be going to facebook/twitter more to find out info etc...).

the stunner to me is the g+ number (i play d&d on roll20 and google + so perhaps i am a bit biased ). but still it looks like the companies are missing out by not pushing g+...the communites there are more rabid and involved than on facebook for instance. but the numbers...yes i know the g+ numbers are comparatively tiny as an audience but is this because the companies haven't tried hard enough (my belief) or because there just aren't enough eyeballs? anyways, interesting to see these figures.

I would surmise that WOTC got a large % of those likes from the 4E Heroes of Neverwinter facebook game.