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]

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.

::raises hand:: My dad bought it when I was 10 and he, my brothers and I all learned together. He only played 2 games before it became ours, but there was no mentorship for me in 1985.

 

[Lem23]

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.

raises hand.

Saw the D&D stuff in a local games shop (Back when Games Workshop sold mostly historical wargames fgures, boardgames, chess sets, wooden puzzles etc, and didn't have their own range of games or figures). D&D basic boxed set and AD&D were on the shelves and looked interesting, so I spent my pocket money on the basic set (it was cheaper than AD&D). Read it over the next couple of days, found it to my liking, mentioned it to a couple of friends, and we soon had a small group of half a dozen players. Had never even seen an advert for it before, never knew anyone else who'd played it, the nearest we came was a couple of people who'd enjoyed Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which hadn't been out that long.

 

[Reynard]

raises hand.

Saw the D&D stuff in a local games shop (Back when Games Workshop sold mostly historical wargames fgures, boardgames, chess sets, wooden puzzles etc, and didn't have their own range of games or figures). D&D basic boxed set and AD&D were on the shelves and looked interesting, so I spent my pocket money on the basic set (it was cheaper than AD&D). Read it over the next couple of days, found it to my liking, mentioned it to a couple of friends, and we soon had a small group of half a dozen players. Had never even seen an advert for it before, never knew anyone else who'd played it, the nearest we came was a couple of people who'd enjoyed Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which hadn't been out that long.

This underscores the importance of presence in stores, especially places like Target and Walmart (in the US). I would imagine you get a lot of relatively young first time players that way.

 

[Fanaelialae]

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.

Raises hand.

I taught myself using the black box with the red dragon on the cover. Taught my sister and a few friends. It wasn't until years later that I actually met people who had prior experience with the game.

 

[Lem23]

This underscores the importance of presence in stores, especially places like Target and Walmart (in the US). I would imagine you get a lot of relatively young first time players that way.

For the time, maybe, but we're taling nearly 40 years ago now. Time's moved on, as have different media. The internet can reach a lot more people than any store can, for example. Podcasts and Twitch channels probably provide better access these days. Plus, when we started playing, there weren't that many older generations playing, now I would think a lot of people that get into it have older siblings, parents, grandparents who played where we didn't.

 

[darjr]

My first session was the Moldvey box, and we had zero level characters cause numbers started at 0 right?

But my older Sister was so not happy about it she ran a game for us and nearly TPKd

 

[Umbran]

This underscores the importance of presence in stores, especially places like Target and Walmart (in the US). I would imagine you get a lot of relatively young first time players that way.

Well, anecdotally.

I would be unsurprised to hear that the physical store channel is small these days, by comparison to what Amazon delivers. Is there going to be a large channel of "never heard about it before, saw it in Target" as opposed to the "My friend showed me this Critical Role thing, and I then bought it on Amazon" channel?

 

[Reynard]

Well, anecdotally.

I would be unsurprised to hear that the physical store channel is small these days, by comparison to what Amazon delivers. Is there going to be a large channel of "never heard about it before, saw it in Target" as opposed to the "My friend showed me this Critical Role thing, and I then bought it on Amazon" channel?

I mean, sure, I guess, but it's hard to tell from inside the internet using customer base already. The starter set getting back onto store shelves was a big deal at the time, so I imagine it was something WotC wanted to see. Who knows how it worked out for them, how many they sold, and how many new players came into the game that way. My kids (13 and 16) do buy stuff online but they also get gift cards and like to go to stores, and often come home with things that intrigued them there rather than things they knew they needed or wanted walking in. Never underestimate the power of money to burn a hole in the pocket of the young.

 

[Morrus]

Well, anecdotally.

I would be unsurprised to hear that the physical store channel is small these days, by comparison to what Amazon delivers. Is there going to be a large channel of "never heard about it before, saw it in Target" as opposed to the "My friend showed me this Critical Role thing, and I then bought it on Amazon" channel?

I can’t speak for WotC, or similar companies, but the physical store channel for ENP is a fraction of the online channels. And that’s despite our efforts to get books into stores.

I guess it’s the opposite for WotC?

 

[Umbran]

I mean, sure, I guess, but it's hard to tell from inside the internet using customer base already.

Is it?

The PBH is currently selling on Amazon.co for $18... and it is ranked #70 in books. Not in genre books. Not in gaming books. Just in books. At #70 five years and more after publication?

The Essentials Kit is #610 in Books. The Starter Set is #412 in Books. These things would need to be flying off the shelves of game stores - that are mostly closed at this moment - to support those kind of PHB sales, wouldn't they?