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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
The list goes on for pages, but we're under 1% now.
The average EN World reader is male, American, between 25-34.
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.
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.
Or, maybe people think that D&D has skewed younger in the past twenty some years?
