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.

 

[Lem23]

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

Is there really any such thing as a non-internet using customer base these days, especially in the younger generation? If the internet had been around when I was a kid, I'd have been googling D&D after seeing it the shops before I ever put any money down, and that's if I'd never come across it online in the case first before seeing it in the shops, which would be unlikely these days.

 

[Morrus]

Is there really any such thing as a non-internet using customer base these days

Nope.

 

[Reynard]

Nope.

I don't buy it. You can watch people discover things every day meatspace if you spend any time in retail stores. Now, they might see a thing and pull out their phone and google it right there, but they don't have to have been previously exposed to it prior to walking into the store to drop money on it. The real world has its charms, even after the advent of the internet.

 

[Morrus]

I don't buy it. You can watch people discover things every day meatspace if you spend any time in retail stores. Now, they might see a thing and pull out their phone and google it right there, but they don't have to have been previously exposed to it prior to walking into the store to drop money on it. The real world has its charms, even after the advent of the internet.

Even my grandma, before she died, bought knitting patterns on the internet. Everybody uses the internet.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

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.

How many of your pupils were younger than you though? Eh?

 

[Parmandur]

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?

The Starter Set has been flying off the shelves at Target, at least, well enough that Target commissioned WotC to make another boxed set they could put in the board game aisle as an evergreen title.

 

[Reynard]

Even my grandma, before she died, bought knitting patterns on the internet. Everybody uses the internet.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying people don't use the internet to discover, research and/or buy things. I am saying that people still do in fact discover and buy things in retail stores. As it relates to this discussion, I am saying people discover and buy those D&D starter sets in big stores. If they didn't, they wouldn't be there.

 

[Reynard]

How many of your pupils were younger than you though? Eh?

That's moving the goal posts quite a bit. You were clearly talking about veteran players bringing in new gamers before, not "who's the oldest?"

 

[Son of the Serpent]

That's moving the goal posts quite a bit. You were clearly talking about veteran players bringing in new gamers before, not "who's the oldest?"

From the very beginning i was talking about a general trend of older players reqruiting younger players.
No goal posts have been moved.
He taught himself. They did not. It just makes sense to ask if they were older or younger (since there are more of them than there are of him). If most of them are younger, trend upheld.

There is no arguing about this. Goal posts. Pfff.

Why on earth woukd it be any different with those whom he taught than himself?

To me it seems like YOU are moving MY goal posts by adding something i never said. "Oh you can only ask how old the poster was. The other people dont exist." Does that sound like it makes any sense? Come ON.

My question is perfectly valid. If you disagree about something as basic as this i respectfully am ignoring your input.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

That's moving the goal posts quite a bit. You were clearly talking about veteran players bringing in new gamers before, not "who's the oldest?"

Also yeah. I said OLDER. Other people said veteran.

If you read back far enough it becomes clear i always was talking about older. I dont know what others were saying. Its not what i said.

Also, if course i can invert it and ask about the pupils age.

None of this is goal post movement.