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]

That would be my point. If you're going to do market research, cutting things off at 75% (ish) of your market isn't a bad place to start. And, frankly, do you really think the percentage of older gamers would be higher in 1995?

Yes.

Maybe not 55+ old, but lots in the 35-45 range: all those who had got in during the '79-'83 era 1e boom while in college or even late high school, and hadn't left.

EDIT to add: never mind that anyone involved in the origins and early days of the game would also have been excluded, which seems rather ridiculous.

FURTHER EDIT to add: and the WotC survey was done somewhat later than 1995. Data gathered in '98, I think, and report released in '99.

 

[Zardnaar]

Probably people in their 20's and 30's are the major purchasers.

Maybe I suspect a lot of the collector types are older.

My collection is equivalent to 3 or 4 groups combined at the gamestore.

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe I suspect a lot of the collector types are older.

My collection is equivalent to 3 or 4 groups combined at the gamestore.

People in their 20's and 30's, on the macro level, tend to have disposable income and fewer obligations. That's why they are the big marketing demographic across the board.

 

[Lanefan]

I've noticed a lot of the old-timers have long since left the site, but we have tons of new, younger folks.

I've also noticed of late what seems like an unusual amount of lines through names of people I thought were stalwarts here. Any idea why this is?

 

[Zardnaar]

People in their 20's and 30's, on the macro level, tend to have disposable income and fewer obligations. That's why they are the big marketing demographic across the board.

Might want to rethink that statement.

Most of my friends own own house freehold.

Instead of playing D&D they spend disposable income on new cars, boats, trips to Europe.

Instead of buying some D&D books I looked at buying the game store. Numbers didn't add up though.

We're not rich as such just no debt everything gets paid in cash.

Booze cruise through eastern Europe got cancelled.

 

[jmucchiello]

Ironically, one of the page ads is from AARP. I'm only 52.

The real skew is "do people of certain ages use web forums?" Although includes my own bias. Do people came here for the forums or the news?

 

[Parmandur]

Might want to rethink that statement.

Most of my friends own own house freehold.

Instead of playing D&D they spend disposable income on new cars, boats, trips to Europe.

Instead of buying some D&D books I looked at buying the game store. Numbers didn't add up though.

We're not rich as such just no debt everything gets paid in cash.

Booze cruise through eastern Europe got cancelled.

Well, exactly. Twenty and thirty something's often can't afford houses or trips to Europe (gotta have that Avocado toast, bro), but will spend on video games, movies or books. That's WotC paying audience.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well, exactly. Twenty and thirty something's often can't afford houses or trips to Europe (gotta have that Avocado toast, bro), but will spend on video games, movies or books. That's WotC paying audience.

I don't spend anything personally on D&D anymore.

We have wish lists for birthdays and Christmas. The books just kinda accumulate.

We're not living that drastically different than we were 15 years ago. Everything just gets saved and every now and then splurge in the books in one hit and buy 5 at once.

Last stuff I personally bought was two years ago. I think the books are breeding. Running out of room, kept my 90s stuff CDs, games,Gamebooks etc.

 

[bedir than]

Hmmm, I expected to see a lot more grognads in Enworld, but apparently those younglings are taking over....

Is it time for Order 6d6?

 

[Jimmy Dick]

I remember playing AD&D when I was 15 and having a blast. The old people in the game were maybe in their late twenties at the most in my area and there were few of them. Fast forward 40 years and now I'm considered one of the old geezers being overran by the hordes of young whippersnappers. Funny thing is, I forget how old I am when I'm running Pathfinder Society games. I feel like I'm maybe 20. Age is no barrier to game playing. I just have more memories than most people do.