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.

 

[Reynard]

Given that these forums skew significantly older than the general player population, I would guess there are a lot of bits of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that new players are being introduced by the previous generation. I doubt that's an actual significant trend. I think millenials and zoomers are discovering D&D by way of Critical Role and other media influences, and are buying books and teaching themselves to play. Which is a good thing. They will come in with fresh ideas and the game will benefit from it.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Given that these forums skew significantly older than the general player population, I would guess there are a lot of bits of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that new players are being introduced by the previous generation. I doubt that's an actual significant trend. I think millenials and zoomers are discovering D&D by way of Critical Role and other media influences, and are buying books and teaching themselves to play. Which is a good thing. They will come in with fresh ideas and the game will benefit from it.

In general i think d&d players have almost always been introduced to it by older players. Not just now. Ill also bet that the median age on critical role is older than the median age of people they introduce to d&d by a decade.

 

[Reynard]

In general i think d&d players have almost always been introduced to it by older players. Not just now. Ill also bet that the median age on critical role is older than the median age of people they introduce to d&d by a decade.

I think as long as D&D has had a presence people have decided it looked cool and bought it and tried to figure it out. I also think they have begged their older siblings/cousins/friends to let them play. I have never seen any data that says which path in is more common or more likely to produce long term gamers.

 

[Mark Hope]

Given that these forums skew significantly older than the general player population, I would guess there are a lot of bits of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that new players are being introduced by the previous generation. I doubt that's an actual significant trend. I think millenials and zoomers are discovering D&D by way of Critical Role and other media influences, and are buying books and teaching themselves to play. Which is a good thing. They will come in with fresh ideas and the game will benefit from it.

In the case of my daughter's group, a couple of them had heard of D&D through Critical Role and, I believe, the Adventure Zone, but were enjoying it as media, not as something you do. The others were all fresh to the concept and the game. My son's group had never heard of any of the streams. Like you, I've no idea which is more common in the overall.

 

[akr71]

I can wait to have kids old enough to play d&d...

We started when my son was barely 7 - below the 'suggested age' of 10 and my daughter was 12. Of course I started playing with my dad & older brother when I was around 7 or 8 also...

Some simple math skills help, but aren't essential - I maintained my son's character sheet for the first year or so. Also, keeping game content age appropriate - that is, make them feel like superheros, monsters and encounters are rarely lethal and short sessions to match their short attention spans.

It wasn't long before my son started running very free-form games for us. A lot of it was improv story telling hugely influenced on the cartoons he was watching, and our characters were basically boiled down to 2 or 3 'stats' & 'skills' that he assigned us. A lot of Last-Airbender/Ninjago types stuff.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

We started when my son was barely 7 - below the 'suggested age' of 10 and my daughter was 12. Of course I started playing with my dad & older brother when I was around 7 or 8 also...

Some simple math skills help, but aren't essential - I maintained my son's character sheet for the first year or so. Also, keeping game content age appropriate - that is, make them feel like superheros, monsters and encounters are rarely lethal and short sessions to match their short attention spans.

It wasn't long before my son started running very free-form games for us. A lot of it was improv story telling hugely influenced on the cartoons he was watching, and our characters were basically boiled down to 2 or 3 'stats' & 'skills' that he assigned us. A lot of Last-Airbender/Ninjago types stuff.

Its a typo

"Can" was supposed to be "cant"

I CANT wait. As in im excited.

HORRIBLE typo. Made the whole statement read like the opposite of what I meant.

 

[akr71]

@Son of the Serpent my eyes missed the typo. I assumed the "can't" and you were excited to teach your kids to game.

I was trying to say that the 'suggested age' is just that - a suggestion. You'll know when they're ready - and they'll blow you away with their creativity in-game.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

@Son of the Serpent my eyes missed the typo. I assumed the "can't" and you were excited to teach your kids to game.

I was trying to say that the 'suggested age' is just that - a suggestion. You'll know when they're ready - and they'll blow you away with their creativity in-game.

wrings hands, head hunched forward and then I'll tell them immersive horror stories with demons they can fight.

I am very excite.

 

[Parmandur]

Given that these forums skew significantly older than the general player population, I would guess there are a lot of bits of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that new players are being introduced by the previous generation. I doubt that's an actual significant trend. I think millenials and zoomers are discovering D&D by way of Critical Role and other media influences, and are buying books and teaching themselves to play. Which is a good thing. They will come in with fresh ideas and the game will benefit from it.

Bit of both: that 1 out of 9 crowd is going to draw in enough new people to be significant, but it is bigger than that.

 

[Umbran]

I would guess there are a lot of bits of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that new players are being introduced by the previous generation.

"Generation" is probably the wrong word here - I was introduced to RPGs by my brother, who is a few years older than me, but the same generation.

I doubt that's an actual significant trend.

History is not strictly a predictor of future behavior, and EN World is a self-selected population, but.. raise your hand if you didn't have someone bring you into the hobby and show you the ropes.

I think millenials and zoomers are discovering D&D by way of Critical Role and other media influences, and are buying books and teaching themselves to play. Which is a good thing. They will come in with fresh ideas and the game will benefit from it.

shrug Anecdote - my goddaughter wanted to learn how to play, so I ran a game for her. She then picked up Critical Role, and then taught her friends, two of whom now also run their own games. Definite chain of mentorship there.