Another Year of EN World Demographics!

As I did last year, this is a look at EN World's demographics. This period is June 2020 to June 2021. The data reflects over 5M unique visitors and tens of millions of page views. The short version -- over the last year, the user base has become younger, and (slightly: 3%) less male. The average EN World reader is now an 18-24 year-old American male (last year it was a 25-34 year-old American...

As I did last year, this is a look at EN World's demographics. This period is June 2020 to June 2021. The data reflects over 5M unique visitors and tens of millions of page views. The short version -- over the last year, the user base has become younger, and (slightly: 3%) less male. The average EN World reader is now an 18-24 year-old American male (last year it was a 25-34 year-old American male).

As before, you can compare these stats to WotC's official Stats for D&D. The most recent figures can be found here.

Age
So last year the dominant age group on the site was 25-34. This year, it's younger - the 18-24 group is the largest. Like last year, EN World skews a little younger than D&D's overall player base, with a higher percentage in the lower age groups, and a lower percentage in the highest age groups. Note that GA doesn't measure under 18s.

enwusersage.png


Gender
Next is the gender data. Google Analytics only provides male and female data, and no data for non-binary people. Within those constraints, 83% of the visitors are male, and 17% female. Last year, 14% were female, so that's an increase of 3%. Still not enough, but headed in the correct direction. According to WotC, 40% of the player base is female and just below 1% is non-binary. So there's still work to be done there!

mf.jpg



Geography
This hasn't changed much from last year. America dominates the chart, with other primarily English-speaking countries behind it. Brazil has more of a presence than any EU country. The EU in general is only about 5% of the user base.

CountryPercentage
United States59.7%
United Kingdom8.3%
Canada7.5%
Australia3.3%
Brazil2.3%
Germany2.3%
Italy1.5%
Netherlands1.3%
Spain0.9%
Sweden0.8%
France0.8%

What do they look at?
The most popular page on the site - unsurprisingly - is the news page, with 12% of the views. Now, bear in mind that each forum thread is a page, so the site has hundreds of thousands of pages and we have tens of millions of page views. That means that a page getting more than a single percentage of the views is a very popular page -- no non-news page has managed that.

About Google Analytics
These are anonymized aggregate stats collected by Google. We only have access to the data in aggregate.
 

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Mercurius

Legend
@Morrus , forgive me for not reading seven pages to see if the question has been answered, but how much has the site increased in readership? Specifically, I'm wondering if, say, that 7% of 45-54 year olds represents a small number than in years past. Meaning, are the overall numbers just going up enough to make the percentages shift, or are the older players fazing out?
 

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon
I'm responding to this now because you referred this thread in another thread...

I think that the slightly younger age is a good thing, but the gender ratios are... not so great. Clearly it's not terrible (because if it was, the number would be closer to zero), but is there something we aren't doing right as a community that is keeping women at bay?
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
I'm responding to this now because you referred this thread in another thread...

I think that the slightly younger age is a good thing, but the gender ratios are... not so great. Clearly it's not terrible (because if it was, the number would be closer to zero), but is there something we aren't doing right as a community that is keeping women at bay?
Yeah like I said in the OP, still work to be done. As you know, we work really hard to make this place inclusive.

The good news is it was 13% three years ago, 17% two years ago, and 19% last year, so it is slowly increasing.

Here's 2021.

Screen Shot 2022-03-16 at 3.16.58 PM.png
 

G

Guest 7034872

Guest
This fascinates me. Please forgive me if this is too too tangential (and I won't whine if the post gets deleted), but I wonder how these numbers compare to other RPG forums. The most recent data I readily could find on D&D growth has 40% of players (including DMs) female.

Oh, goody! A GameRant link.

What it doesn't say, though, is what percent of RPG forum users are female. Playing the game is one thing; getting so into it that you start posting on forums is another. Have you any data on what the numbers are like in other forums? Intuitively, I'd be surprised if EN World actually lags behind others: you've focused so hard on it.

Another thing I ran into is the difficulty in finding any racial demographics. To my untrained and unobservant eye, it seems less popular among minorities in the U.S., but I have no data to support or undercut that. I'd hope there's been at least some meaningful progress on this, but who knows?? When I try Googling for it, all I find are analyses of racial demographics within the imaginary worlds of the game, but nothing recent about racial demographics of the players. Have studies been done on this? Anyone got a link?
 

aramis erak

Legend
I would say 95% did a few RPG games with their kids. Did it stick? That is another question. Probably the same percentage as with a regular group of new players.
I know both my kids have GM'd for groups I've not been a part of... including teaching newbs. Both before they hit 18...
 


aramis erak

Legend
I thought D&D was targeted at college aged adults based on reading the ruleset.

3rd Edition is more technically complex, and 2nd even more so. Are kids getting dumber for the simplification of each new edition, I wonder.
Maximum readability in the population is to write to an 8th grade level. Adults below that reading level are unlikely to be reading for non-work/non-school purposes, and of the literate population in the US, most have 8th grade or higher reading levels.

Back in 2013, Harley Davidson claims that the average age of their customer is 47 but others dispute that saying their average customer was over 50 at the time.
Probably arithmetic mean vs mode...
Can you imagine a TV commercial for a TTRPG now? Madness! Though I'm actually a tiny bit surprised that WotC isn't doing YouTube (etc.) ads.
I've seen MTG ads galore on YouTube, and a couple for D&D. About a 20:1 ratio. Wrath of (something)... I tend to ignore commercials.
 



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