A Look At EN World's Stats & Demographics

EN World is an old community by internet standards - 16 years old! When it started, there was no Facebook or Twitter, WotC was being run by Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey, Pathfinder wasn't even a glimmer in Jason Bulmahn's eye, and D&D was launching its 3rd edition. The forums had only about 4,000 members! Decades pass, and things change, and I thought it would be fun to take a peek at the demographics of this community's members. With over half a million individual users in the last 30 days, making millions of pageviews, a look at Google Analytics can reveal a lot of data on who is browsing EN World. No surprise, male Americans make the largest group, but there are increases in other countries. Note that all this data is aggregate, anonymous and from Google's analytics service. Consider this a sort of New Year "State of EN World" thing.

Overall traffic -- 3.9 million unique visitors over the year with 0.5 million in the last 30 days; over 11 million separate user sessions and tens of millions of pageviews. 77.3% are returning visitors and 32.7% are new.

The overall audience shows age and gender. That has changed a lot in recent years -- the age is skewing lower than it used to. In particular, the 18-24 group has grown considerably. Sadly, the gender disparity, although slightly better, is still not even close to equal, with 92.4% of the traffic being male. I don't know what the overall disparity of actual players is, so I couldn't tell you whether that is representative or not. Note that this is (see the popular pages below) largely people just reading the news, not necessarily participating in the community.

The following data is interesting. The US used to be around 80% of traffic, but it seems more locations are swinging by these days. Desktop browser usage has been dropping for years, and it's now starting to approach 50%. Another few years, and it'll be the minority. Social network referrals show that Facebook is by far the largest source of social network traffic, followed by Reddit. Social networks, however, only provide 4.5% of traffic overall with most of it coming directly from organic Google searches.

LOCATION	DEVICES	REFERRALS	*SOCIAL NETWORKS
USA 60.73% Canada 7.95% UK 6.84% Australia 3.88% Brazil 1.95% Germany 1.95% Italy 1.62 Netherlands 1.28% France 1.15% Sweden 0.94%	Desktop 57.56% Mobile 35.99% Tablet 6.45%	Organic Search 74.8% Direct 16.1% Social Networks* 4.5% Website Links 4.7% Other 0.46% Email 0% (62 people!)	Facebook 41.92% Reddit 24.83% Blogger 18.39% Twitter 6.9% Google+ 2.8% Stack Exchange 2.19% Pinterest 1.43% VKontakte 0.45% Wikia 0.4% StumbleUpon 0.2%

The table below shows the most popular areas of EN World. The news page takes in over 50% of the traffic by itself, but that's no shock.

1. Front/news page
2. D&D 5th Edition forum
3. Character Sheets
4. Character Builds & Optimization forum
5. Media Lounge forum
7. Play-by-post forums
8. General RPG forum





The list below shows the most common search queries which landed people on EN World. Very D&D 5E oriented, as one might expect. I like "elf puns".

[UPDATE - I did this wrong before; this is the correct list]

1.	unknown
2.	enworld
3.	en world
4.	(not set)
5.	enworld.org
6.	enworld 5e
7.	enworld forum
8.	dungeons and dragons forum
9.	homebrewing-a-world-help-me-out
10.	delta green
11.	mystara 5e
12.	http://www.enworld.org/
13.	breaking up with pathfinder rpg
14.	enword
15.	why does 5e suck mishihari site
16.	rape-culture-and-the-matriarchy-a-twist-on-elves-let-s-do-it-right
17.	d&d reddit monster
18.	www.enworld.org
19.	cache:http://www.enworld.org/forum/forum.php
20.	dnd 5th edition character builder
21.	enlarge person spell also gain size increase
22.	gish d&d
23.	d&d 5e dex fighter
24.	rpg downloads
25.	princes of the apocalypse review
26.	kobald press tome of beasts list
27.	shadow of the demonlord en world
28.	enworld 5e forum
29.	5e favored soul
30.	5e character sheet
31.	doomvault site
32.	5e dungeons and dragons long rest interrupted
33.	d&d 5e wizard guide
34.	5e fighter guide charop
35.	5e wizard guide
36.	traveller d20 srd
37.	d&d intellect devourer
38.	dark obelisk kickstarter
39.	enworld forums
40.	hoard of the dragon queen errata
41.	enworld ua ranger
42.	wand of viscid globs overpowered
43.	d&d 5e sorcerer
44.	dnd forum
45.	heist site:enworld.org
46.	chris perkins the dm experience
47.	d&d 5e sorcerer guide
48.	what-are-the-options-for-living-without-ddi
49.	dungeons and dragons 5th edition monster cards
50.	utility power 4e
51.	d&d 5e fighter guide
52.	aughisky d&d
53.	d&d 5e character builder
54.	hoard of the dragon queen
55.	5e grapple
56.	volo's guide to monsters new races
57.	d&d 5e rogue guide
58.	d-d-s-lead-increases-stars-without-number-surges-in-latest-orr-group-report
59.	map greyhawk
60.	d&d 5e character sheet
61.	5e warlock guide
62.	pathfinder steal combat maneuver
63.	5e great weapon master d12 axe
64.	savage worlds tokens
65.	sword coast bladesinger
66.	"social skills"
67.	phandalin population
68.	bladesinger 5e
69.	campaign log site
70.	d&d 5e goblin stats
71.	spelljammer 5e
72.	titansgrave season 2
73.	5e highest passive perception
74.	recommended-magic-item-creation-alternative-rules
75.	en world forum
76.	bullgrit blog
77.	chronicles of the gatekeeper review
78.	dragon+ on computer
79.	converting conan to 5e
80.	tyranny of dragons errata
81.	d&d 5e what counts as not wearing armor
82.	"night's dark terror" podcast
83.	5e sorcerer guide
84.	the-treasure-map-rg
85.	conan rpg monster tokens
86.	d and d 5e witch
87.	d&d 5e rogue
88.	empire of nerath
89.	5e sorcerer
90.	d&d character sheets
91.	dungeon mapping software
92.	iarno albrek
93.	arcane trickster 5th edition
94.	d&d 5e warlock
95.	d&d 5e
96.	shannara 5th edition d&d
97.	5e unarmored defense
98.	d&d 5e pixie
99.	enworld.com
100.	ocupied space blade barrier

CONCLUSION - it's clear that the largest audience grouping here is male American D&D players. The audience size itself has increased over the year month on month, exceeding half a million unique users each month. That's a lot of people! The most popular page is the front/news page (not surprising) followed by the D&D 5th Edition forum. Areas where I'd like to improve include more coverage of non-D&D games (lots of that coming this year with our paid freelance articles program to be run by Chris Helton) and a broader, more representative sample of visitors.

The largest behavioural grouping by far from regular visitors is folks who come along and read the news. That has always been the busiest part of the sites and continues to be.



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[Henry]

I'm personally pleased that the 40- and 50-somethings are no longer the dominant group - it means the hobby will continue. And Russ, you should be very proud of the community you've built - I don't know if such a thing could be built anymore outside of Reddit or Facebook.

 

[aramis erak]

I too am a bit concerned about the low amount of women.

En World really doesn't seem like a hotbed of sexism, but maybe there is something I'm (or we are) not seeing?

The high rates of misogynistic males in gaming, perhaps?

 

[Ricochet]

Interesting read!

People who use Ghostery and other such features to avoid being tracked is a swiftly-growing segment of the internet's population. These are mostly 20-30 year-olds, and they aren't being accounted for here or in other statistical analysis. The price for anonymity is perhaps exclusion, as websites will cater to what they know, but the risk is scaring away a segment of their visitors which might be the key people when it comes to economic potential. It's a fascinating time to be on the web, and some companies/websites will be focusing on an altogether wrong segment if they only go by empirical data (most can track sales by age, gender etc. too, of course, where people forfeit anonymity more than on page views).

 

[Ricochet]

The high rates of misogynistic males in gaming, perhaps?

I think it is simply women not being particularly interested in forum communities compared to men (they skew more heavily in Facebook and similar settings/websites than sites like EN World) so you encounter more of these types. They aren't representative of the site as a whole, because people who frequent the forums are maybe 10% of those who frequent EN World. Also, a larger group of males than females are hardcore gamers.

 

[JustinCase]

Fascinating.

It might be of interest that the only true Dutch D&D forum has shut down in the last year (after a few years of rapid decline), so I can imagine visitor numbers from the Netherlands have grown. That is at least partially the reason for my own increasing presence here.

 

[Venley]

I think it is simply women not being particularly interested in forum communities compared to men (they skew more heavily in Facebook and similar settings/websites than sites like EN World) so you encounter more of these types. They aren't representative of the site as a whole, because people who frequent the forums are maybe 10% of those who frequent EN World. Also, a larger group of males than females are hardcore gamers.

Partly true. For myself as a woman I am now wary of forums given past experiences. This is definitely one of the better sites.
Why subject oneself voluntarily to what is worse than encountered in real life?

 

[Venley]

Interesting read!

People who use Ghostery and other such features to avoid being tracked is a swiftly-growing segment of the internet's population. These are mostly 20-30 year-olds, and they aren't being accounted for here or in other statistical analysis. The price for anonymity is perhaps exclusion, as websites will cater to what they know, but the risk is scaring away a segment of their visitors which might be the key people when it comes to economic potential. It's a fascinating time to be on the web, and some companies/websites will be focusing on an altogether wrong segment if they only go by empirical data (most can track sales by age, gender etc. too, of course, where people forfeit anonymity more than on page views).

Ghostery user here. One 55+ female not being counted.

 

[Morrus]

Interesting read!

People who use Ghostery and other such features to avoid being tracked is a swiftly-growing segment of the internet's population. These are mostly 20-30 year-olds, and they aren't being accounted for here or in other statistical analysis. The price for anonymity is perhaps exclusion, as websites will cater to what they know, but the risk is scaring away a segment of their visitors which might be the key people when it comes to economic potential. It's a fascinating time to be on the web, and some companies/websites will be focusing on an altogether wrong segment if they only go by empirical data (most can track sales by age, gender etc. too, of course, where people forfeit anonymity more than on page views).

That's certainly a thing, as the above stats include only 65-68% of the traffic here.

That said, as a sample, 65% is enormous. Generally speaking, when you take samples, it doesn't change much once you have over a couple of percent of the total, and if you have data on 5% it's not really going to change at all.

For example, for a population of 4M (which is the yearly unique visitor count here) with a confidence level of 95% with a 1% margin of error, you only need a sample size of 9,581, or 0.24%. We need a sample of 0.24%, and we have one of 65%. If we increased that sample size from 65% to 100% of the traffic, those percentages above aren't going to change.

(Some statistics professor is going to come along now and say I did that wrong!)

 

[Arilyn]

I think the low number of women is because of the high numbers of 5e fans EN World attracts. EN world is bringing in lots of news from many differing gaming sources, but if you look at the forums and the comments attached to stories, it is 5e which attracts the most attention. Dungeons & Dragons has always had difficulty attracting a large female fan base. This is not necessarily true of gaming in general. FATE, for example has a lot of women players, and there is a lot of women posting on FATE sites. Now, D&D is the most played game, so in that sense, there are fewer female gamers, but looking outside D&D things are becoming more equal. I think the current edition of D&D should be able to attract more female gamers, but it doesn't seem to be making great strides in this direction. Perhaps the current crop of modules tend to be too dungeony?

 

[MoonSong]

On the plus side: Wee I'm special and you don't!

On the minus side: Gee I didn't think I was that outnumbered.... maybe I should stop coming....Nah just kidding.

..........................

Now that I think of it, I'm not seeing a lot of prominent female posters here anymore. For example it's been ages since I last saw [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION] post something...