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.

 

[Lanefan]

From local observation, I can assure you that nobody in New Zealand plays D&D. And zero Americans play. Unarguable observational proof!

But Canadians do!

Seriously - taking those stats-by-nationality as a percentage of that nation's population, your Canadian representation here is highest of all. And it's not even that close.

Yay us!

 

[Lanefan]

Question: do the various online sites e.g. Roll-20, Fantasy Grounds, etc., gather any data about their players? Their stats on game-side stuff - classes played, systems played, etc. - are kept in some detail; what about real-life-side stuff such as age-gender-nationality of site users?

If that data is gathered (and if they'll share it!), that'd give a halfway useful and fairly broad-based representation of the player base, with the only likely skew being a bit younger as older people (like me!) may not have adopted the technology yet, and-or may not be interested in it.

 

[jedijon]

Aren’t things ever ok the way they are?

for more people X to play, would the game need to change for majority Y? And would that reduce overall participation?

it’s enough that the experience is beloved. And evergreen.

 

[Reynard]

Aren’t things ever ok the way they are?

for more people X to play, would the game need to change for majority Y? And would that reduce overall participation?

it’s enough that the experience is beloved. And evergreen.

Remember when every cover was a scantily clad warrior woman with a gravity defying bosom and a serious threat of chafing? that was a barrier to entry. It was intimidating. And it was unnecessary. The game did not lose anything by putting female characters of different body types in sensible adventuring clothes, and the community gained new players. It's win-win.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Remember when every cover was a scantily clad warrior woman with a gravity defying bosom and a serious threat of chafing? that was a barrier to entry. It was intimidating. And it was unnecessary. The game did not lose anything by putting female characters of different body types in sensible adventuring clothes, and the community gained new players. It's win-win.

Don't forget about the third win of "it looks awesome"

That does add a lot.

 

[Envisioner]

Remember when every cover was a scantily clad warrior woman with a gravity defying bosom and a serious threat of chafing?

Ah, those were the days....

that was a barrier to entry. It was intimidating.

Why? Guys weren't intimidated by the giant muscly barbarians with greatswords, why should girls have been intimidated by the floating glowing sorceresses with slinky silk nightgowns and plunging decolletage? This is fantasy wish-fulfillment; if it gives you an inferiority complex, then you're viewing it through the exact opposite of the intended lens.

And it was unnecessary.

Disagree completely.

The game did not lose anything by putting female characters of different body types in sensible adventuring clothes, and the community gained new players. It's win-win.

Sensible adventuring clothes are a bit boring IMO, but I can buy that gritty realism can improve immersion for some people, so that's fine. But "of different body types"? This is a game that mostly revolves around physical challenges. People who are morbidly obese don't belong in dungeons, I'm sorry but it's true. Unless you're a wizard who somehow got to fifth level and started casting Fly, without ever having to go out into the dangerous wilderlands in search of adventure (possibl,e, but distinctly unlikely), then you can't even get down the stairs into some undead-filled crypt, let alone cross chasms in the Underdark on a narrow stone bridge that threatens to dramatically collapse at the last moment.

And quite frankly, I don't want to see unattractive people all over my D&D picture-books. Those craepy halflings in the PHB are bad enough. Once again, this is fantasy wish-fulfillment. The Rule of Cool is more important than people who have insecurities or mental health problems (and I say that as someone who's been in therapy for five years to treat his depression and anger issues). If you feel ostracized by D&D, there are a billion other hobbies you can choose from. Get over yourself, you're not entitled to walk into an existing hobby community and force it to conform with your preferences, any more than you're allowed to walk into an NFL Football league and turn all their uniforms pink because you think it's prettier. If you did that, you'd be cheesing off every existing fan by destroying something they love and you don't, and they'd absolutely have the right to be furious with you.

 

[ccooke]

Ah, those were the days....



Why? Guys weren't intimidated by the giant muscly barbarians with greatswords, why should girls have been intimidated by the floating glowing sorceresses with slinky silk nightgowns and plunging decolletage? This is fantasy wish-fulfillment; if it gives you an inferiority complex, then you're viewing it through the exact opposite of the intended lens.



Disagree completely.



Sensible adventuring clothes are a bit boring IMO, but I can buy that gritty realism can improve immersion for some people, so that's fine. But "of different body types"? This is a game that mostly revolves around physical challenges. People who are morbidly obese don't belong in dungeons, I'm sorry but it's true. Unless you're a wizard who somehow got to fifth level and started casting Fly, without ever having to go out into the dangerous wilderlands in search of adventure (possibl,e, but distinctly unlikely), then you can't even get down the stairs into some undead-filled crypt, let alone cross chasms in the Underdark on a narrow stone bridge that threatens to dramatically collapse at the last moment.

And quite frankly, I don't want to see unattractive people all over my D&D picture-books. Those craepy halflings in the PHB are bad enough. Once again, this is fantasy wish-fulfillment. The Rule of Cool is more important than people who have insecurities or mental health problems (and I say that as someone who's been in therapy for five years to treat his depression and anger issues). If you feel ostracized by D&D, there are a billion other hobbies you can choose from. Get over yourself, you're not entitled to walk into an existing hobby community and force it to conform with your preferences, any more than you're allowed to walk into an NFL Football league and turn all their uniforms pink because you think it's prettier. If you did that, you'd be cheesing off every existing fan by destroying something they love and you don't, and they'd absolutely have the right to be furious with you.

If the only women allowed in rpg art are sexualised, then it conveys the message that the only role for women is as a sexual object.

In case you missed it, that's not exactly going to demonstrate that the hobby is open to anyone who isn't male.

One of the most important jobs of the art in an rpg book - especially the player rules - is to make people say "I could make a character like that". That's why I was so pleased with the 5e phb - the 'iconic human' (if 5e did those) is a black woman, and one who looks damned competent. There are maybe two bits of art in the book - out of a bit less than 200 iirc - that are a little exploitative. Everything else has different phenotypes, genders, whatever and they all look like the sort of people that someone could say "Yeah, I want to be that one".

...

Also, I take back my optimism from upthread. Clearly there's a lot further to go than I had hoped.

 

[Hussar]

Ah, those were the days....



Why? Guys weren't intimidated by the giant muscly barbarians with greatswords, why should girls have been intimidated by the floating glowing sorceresses with slinky silk nightgowns and plunging decolletage? This is fantasy wish-fulfillment; if it gives you an inferiority complex, then you're viewing it through the exact opposite of the intended lens.
/snip

Oh, for the love of little fishies, PLEASE do not go down this road. It will never, ever end well. This is an interesting thread and folks have maintained a solid level of civility. Let's keep it that way shall we?

 

[Parmandur]

I was kinda joking.
Numbers are up but Animal Crossing has something like 10 million players and only came out a month ago.

On Facebook even on the D&D forums a lot a playing that.

I suspect more D&D players are playing that than D&D online.

I don't think toxic us a large part of things but people online build bubbles. Different cultures and genders are just interested in different stuff.

I've ended up in games where Americans are a minority. Toxics an improvement there. Type in something like hi from the USA or anything in Polish and see what reaction you get.

Forums skew towards hardcore, D&D doesn't tend to sell as well outside the anglosphere and even worse outside of Europe.

In my household, 50% of people playing Animal Crossing are Male.

 

[Envisioner]

If the only women allowed in rpg art are sexualised, then it conveys the message that the only role for women is as a sexual object.

I completely disagree that this message is present in the situation; I think that people with your perspective always see that message only because you've been taught to look for it. It's a face in the clouds, which you only saw because you went looking for faces; if you go to a woman's studies course and they tell you to go hunting for things that seem misogynistic, then you can easily find things that look that way. But the cloud isn't actually face-shaped, it's just a cloud. The babe art isn't misogynistic, it's just something that a male artist, hired by a company whose produce had a mostly-male audience at the time, tried to make look pleasing so that people, mostly men but also some women, would enjoy looking at it. The fact that today's girls mostly look at it and see only sexism, that's the fault of the ideologues who have educated them with the idea that they should view the world through this lens. If we were raising our girls to be, say, artistically inclined, and to place their priority on evaluating the beauty of images from a technical and aesthetic perspective, then they'd look at those scantily-clad women and see only the artistic beauty being presented. Instead, they're being told to imagine sociological ramifications which aren't actually there, and they think everything has a message and is trying to change people's minds, instead of just being a pretty picture which is there for them to look at if they'd enjoy doing so, and can easily be ignored otherwise.