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 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.

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!

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.

Country	Percentage
United States	59.7%
United Kingdom	8.3%
Canada	7.5%
Australia	3.3%
Brazil	2.3%
Germany	2.3%
Italy	1.5%
Netherlands	1.3%
Spain	0.9%
Sweden	0.8%
France	0.8%

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.

 

[J.Quondam]

No it’s not! Vampirism would be great!

D&D, you see, is just an elaborate ploy to entice newbs into the hobby so grognards can drain them of their precious bodily fluids.

Who knew that "Reality" was actually a Domain of Dread??

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

D&D, you see, is just an elaborate ploy to entice newbs into the hobby so grognards can drain them of their precious bodily fluids.

Bleah. Too much congealed Mountain Dew in the system.

Who knew that "Reality" was actually a Domain of Dread??

Anyone who was around for 2020.

 

[Umbran]

No it’s not! Vampirism would be great!

Dude, you know the adventures are balanced so the PCs will have to work at it, but will in the end they will force you into gaseous form and then fill your coffin with holy water. It won't be a pretty end.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No it’s not! Vampirism would be great!

not for anyone else other than the vampire...

 

[imagineGod]

Speaking of demographics, there are people here who are very experienced. here who may offer insights.

Which demographics are the best target for Third Party Kickstarters? There are too many Kickstarters I backed that I ended up selling because nobody in my circle seems interested in playing those games.

5th Edition is usually a sure winner on Kickstarter, but not always. Connor Alexander's Coyote and Crow Kickstarter is the best case study about a first time creator, using an unknown d12 game system, telling rarely told stories of Native American Futurism and able rake in over a million Dollars.

On the other hand, we have a very well known company, Green Ronin, who launched a popular romantic fantasy line, first seen in the True20 era of the d20 OGL, followed by a successful AGE system and most recently a 5e conversion, but they struggled to even cross $40,000.



Most recently, yet another 5e project was launched, by an unknown creator, the product being some variant Wizard of Oz RPG, and already crossed $40,000 in three days (still slow compared to Free League games that fund in hours or minutes).


THE CONNUNDRUM
Speaking of a funded but 5 years late Kickstarter, that I backed but will never play its unique system now, so am advising the creator to try a popular conversion to either 5e or the Free League d6 for a re-launch.

Does anyone have any idea, why 5e is not a sure winner for Third Party Publishers anymore?

Are buyers avoiding spending on Third Parties to focus on purchasing more official 5e books from WoTC?

 

[Zardnaar]

Speaking of demographics, there are people here who are very experienced. here who may offer insights.

Which demographics are the best target for Third Party Kickstarters? There are too many Kickstarters I backed that I ended up selling because nobody in my circle seems interested in playing those games.

5th Edition is usually a sure winner on Kickstarter, but not always. Connor Alexander's Coyote and Crow Kickstarter is the best case study about a first time creator, using an unknown d12 game system, telling rarely told stories of Native American Futurism and able rake in over a million Dollars.

On the other hand, we have a very well known company, Green Ronin, who launched a popular romantic fantasy line, first seen in the True20 era of the d20 OGL, followed by a successful AGE system and most recently a 5e conversion, but they struggled to even cross $40,000.

View attachment 138492

Most recently, yet another 5e project was launched, by an unknown creator, the product being some variant Wizard of Oz RPG, and already crossed $40,000 in three days (still slow compared to Free League games that fund in hours or minutes).
View attachment 138493

THE CONNUNDRUM
Speaking of a funded but 5 years late Kickstarter, that I backed but will never play its unique system now, so am advising the creator to try a popular conversion to either 5e or the Free League d6 for a re-launch.

Does anyone have any idea, why 5e is not a sure winner for Third Party Publishers anymore?

Are buyers avoiding spending on Third Parties to focus on purchasing more official 5e books from WoTC?

Probably to many jumping on the bandwagon.

Also glut. How much RPG material do you need? I think I have 30 odd 5E books most barely used or even read.

 

[imagineGod]

Probably to many jumping on the bandwagon.

Also glut. How much RPG material do you need? I think I have 30 odd 5E books most barely used or even read.

Thanks for the response. I am thinking along similar lines. I think many of the 24 to 44 combined demographic groups have too much 5e already.

Then the over 45s probably even still have that early d20 glut from the DnD3e era.

So the primary market could be the 18s. And likely they never heard of Green Ronin, so without that brand recognition, Green Ronin is now just any other TPP. That is as big fall for them.

I am impressed with the Free League (Fria Ligan) publisher , coming from an unknown Swedish brand to a big player on Kickstarter. And now they are doing 5e too, with a successful half million Dollars Symbaroum 5e Kickstarter.

 

[Morrus]

Which demographics are the best target for Third Party Kickstarters? There are too many Kickstarters I backed that I ended up selling because nobody in my circle seems interested in playing those games.

5th Edition is usually a sure winner on Kickstarter, but not always. Connor Alexander's Coyote and Crow Kickstarter is the best case study about a first time creator, using an unknown d12 game system, telling rarely told stories of Native American Futurism and able rake in over a million Dollars.

On the other hand, we have a very well known company, Green Ronin, who launched a popular romantic fantasy line, first seen in the True20 era of the d20 OGL, followed by a successful AGE system and most recently a 5e conversion, but they struggled to even cross $40,000.

View attachment 138492

Most recently, yet another 5e project was launched, by an unknown creator, the product being some variant Wizard of Oz RPG, and already crossed $40,000 in three days (still slow compared to Free League games that fund in hours or minutes).
View attachment 138493

THE CONNUNDRUM
Speaking of a funded but 5 years late Kickstarter, that I backed but will never play its unique system now, so am advising the creator to try a popular conversion to either 5e or the Free League d6 for a re-launch.

Does anyone have any idea, why 5e is not a sure winner for Third Party Publishers anymore?

Are buyers avoiding spending on Third Parties to focus on purchasing more official 5e books from WoTC?

You're harping on about this is a lot of different threads right now. I think maybe you should start your own thread about why games should all be 5E.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

On the other hand, we have a very well known company, Green Ronin, who launched a popular romantic fantasy line, first seen in the True20 era of the d20 OGL, followed by a successful AGE system and most recently a 5e conversion, but they struggled to even cross $40,000.

Why did they need to cross $40k? That more than covered their printing costs and they don't have anything special they were unlocking beyond that.

Blue Rose 5E has been available as a PDF from Drive Thru RPG for months and it's a Silver seller there. The new version has been dissected and praised by folks over at RPG.net, where there's more of an audience for the game than here at ENWorld. (Green Ronin in general has diminished in prominence here, since it went all-in on Pathfinder and AGE.)

More importantly, most fans of Blue Rose are playing the two previous versions (True20 and AGE), both of which continue to chug along just fine. Blue Rose 5E is a niche product, although a well-respected one with some additions to the game, like narrative wealth, that lots of groups might find worth incorporating. (As many 5E groups agree, wealth in 5E is kind of pointless. Blue Rose 5E stops screwing around and says "yeah, break your characters into wealth bands and just let them have anything in their economic tier without counting copper pieces.")

While I'm sure Green Ronin would have been fine with a million-dollar campaign, it's not at all necessary and raising $40k for a product that has been out, in various versions, for months or years, is only a "failure" in a very weird, specific sense.

Most recently, yet another 5e project was launched, by an unknown creator, the product being some variant Wizard of Oz RPG, and already crossed $40,000 in three days (still slow compared to Free League games that fund in hours or minutes).
View attachment 138493

If you look at the comments from supporters, both on Kickstarter and on message boards (we have to different threads on this campaign here at ENWorld), you'll see this is a product that appeals to old-school Oz fans. It's a small but passionate fanbase and many of us -- I'm part of the fanbase -- have been waiting for public domain content vultures to knock it off with the "it's Oz, but edgy" nonsense of the past few years. A pure, Baum-only take on the setting is very, very exciting for a very specific group of nerds, many of whom are happy to drop money on Oz stuff. (My biggest Oz expense is a complete run of the Books of Wonder recreations of the first runs of the series from a few decades ago, and I love 'em.)

Does anyone have any idea, why 5e is not a sure winner for Third Party Publishers anymore?

Why is soda not a sure fire winner? Why are action movies not a sure fire winner? Why are pizza places not a sure fire winner?

There's a bunch of reasons, and cherry-picking two campaigns to create a trend doesn't really work.

Sometimes campaigns are run by people who clearly will not be able to deliver what they're saying. Sometimes their ideas are terrible. Sometimes the people involved are toxic pieces of crap and word has gotten around. Sometimes their ideas are great and their implementation is crap. Sometimes people are running wildly unrealistic campaigns (I have a friend who's trying to charge $45+ for a book of photos of a niche celebrity without any communication with backers or explanations of why he needs to collect $50k to start production). Sometimes the campaigns are for things that are basically duplicates of what's already out there (a whole lot of dice makers, this means you).

Are buyers avoiding spending on Third Parties to focus on purchasing more official 5e books from WoTC?

This is a hell of a leap, man. I've Kickstarted more game stuff than I care to think about, am nowhere near the most prolific backer even in my personal gaming circles, and all gaming spending is in the same bucket for me. WotC has three whole books I'm buying this fall, the most I've ever purchased in a row other than the core books from them, but that in no way impacts what I Kickstart or don't. I've got four Kickstarted books coming between now and next March.

If there is a downturn in overall Kickstarter numbers, it would likely be due to larger economic factors relating to the pandemic or a general maturing of the 5E market and folks looking at their straining book shelves and saying "yeah, this is probably enough for now, unless something amazing comes along." But that latter factor would impact WotC, too, and from what we in the public can see, it certainly doesn't look like sales are slowing down.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also glut. How much RPG material do you need? I think I have 30 odd 5E books most barely used or even read.

I purge about once a year, sending stuff off to Noble Knight. I'm trying to keep my shelf to stuff I will use, except for a few exceptional cases, like the 1E commemorative books or stuff like the upcoming Oz 5E stuff (I don't expect to use it, but I literally became an Oz fan the same month I started playing D&D, and I can't pass this one up).