Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 7972587" data-attributes="member: 1"><p>WotC <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-ds-best-year-yet.671664/" target="_blank">released some figures this week</a>. 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).</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p>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!</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Short version:</strong> EN World skews younger, but more male than the overall D&D community.</li> </ul><p>WotC is looking at <strong>40M fans</strong>, we're looking at <strong>5.6M unique users </strong>(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.</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 26px"><strong>Age</strong></span></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><table style='width: 100%'><tr><th><p style="text-align: left">Age</p> </th><th><p style="text-align: left">Numbers</p> </th><th><p style="text-align: left">Percentage</p> </th></tr><tr><td>18-24</td><td>592,401 users</td><td>24.58%</td></tr><tr><td>25-34</td><td>1,309,373 users</td><td>54.33%</td></tr><tr><td>35-44</td><td>330,755 users</td><td>13.46%</td></tr><tr><td>45-54</td><td>138,372 users</td><td>5.74%</td></tr><tr><td>55-64</td><td>26,689 users</td><td>1.11%</td></tr><tr><td>65+</td><td>12,631 users</td><td>0.52%</td></tr></table><p></p><p>As you can see, the figures aren't as evenly distributed <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-ds-best-year-yet.671664/" target="_blank">as WotC's</a>. 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.</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">26% of WotC's audience is over 25, while only 20% of EN World's is.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">7.37% of EN World's audience is over 45.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Under 18s are not included in the stats.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">EN World skews younger than the D&D community overall.</li> </ul><p>[ATTACH=full]121346[/ATTACH]</p><p>For comparison, here are WotC's figures.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]121347[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]121422[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>And here are those same figures in absolute numbers -- 10% of 40,000,000 people is a LOT of people!</p><p></p><table style='width: 100%'><tr><th><p style="text-align: left">Age</p> </th><th><p style="text-align: left">Percentage</p> </th><th><p style="text-align: left">Numbers</p> </th></tr><tr><td>8-12</td><td>12%</td><td>4.8 million</td></tr><tr><td>13-17</td><td>13%</td><td>5.2 million</td></tr><tr><td>18-24</td><td>15%</td><td>6 million</td></tr><tr><td>25-29</td><td>15%</td><td>6 million</td></tr><tr><td>30-34</td><td>19%</td><td>7.6 million</td></tr><tr><td>35-39</td><td>15%</td><td>6 million</td></tr><tr><td>40-45</td><td>11%</td><td>4.4 million</td></tr></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 26px"><strong>Gender</strong></span></p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>Of those, it reports 85.56% male, 14.44% female. It doesn't provide data on non-binary visitors.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]121345[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 26px"><strong>Geography</strong></span></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>As you can see, it skews primarily English-speaking heavily, which is expected for an English-language community.</p><p></p><table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>United States</td><td>3,376,839 users</td><td>59.14%</td></tr><tr><td>United Kingdom (yay!)</td><td>478,217 users</td><td>8.38%</td></tr><tr><td>Canada</td><td>411,179 users</td><td>7.2%</td></tr><tr><td>Australia</td><td>198,922 users</td><td>3.48%</td></tr><tr><td>Brazil</td><td>125,682 users</td><td>2.2%</td></tr><tr><td>Germany</td><td>109,248 users</td><td>1.91%</td></tr><tr><td>Italy</td><td>95,682 users</td><td>1.68%</td></tr><tr><td>Netherlands</td><td>74,139 users</td><td>1.3%</td></tr><tr><td>Sweden</td><td>51,479 users</td><td>0.9%</td></tr><tr><td>Spain</td><td>47,096 users</td><td>0.82%</td></tr></table><p></p><p>The list goes on for pages, but we're under 1% now.</p><p></p><p>The average EN World reader is male, American, between 25-34.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Morrus, post: 7972587, member: 1"] WotC [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-ds-best-year-yet.671664/']released some figures this week[/URL]. 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! [LIST] [*][B]Short version:[/B] EN World skews younger, but more male than the overall D&D community. [/LIST] WotC is looking at [B]40M fans[/B], we're looking at [B]5.6M unique users [/B](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! [SIZE=7][B]Age[/B][/SIZE] 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. [TABLE] [TR] [TH][LEFT]Age[/LEFT][/TH] [TH][LEFT]Numbers[/LEFT][/TH] [TH][LEFT]Percentage[/LEFT][/TH] [/TR] [TR] [TD]18-24[/TD] [TD]592,401 users[/TD] [TD]24.58%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]25-34[/TD] [TD]1,309,373 users[/TD] [TD]54.33%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]35-44[/TD] [TD]330,755 users[/TD] [TD]13.46%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]45-54[/TD] [TD]138,372 users[/TD] [TD]5.74%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]55-64[/TD] [TD]26,689 users[/TD] [TD]1.11%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]65+[/TD] [TD]12,631 users[/TD] [TD]0.52%[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] As you can see, the figures aren't as evenly distributed [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-ds-best-year-yet.671664/']as WotC's[/URL]. 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. [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 12.09.27 AM.png"]121346[/ATTACH] For comparison, here are WotC's figures. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 12.42.49 AM.png"]121347[/ATTACH] 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. [ATTACH type="full" alt="wotc_age.jpg"]121422[/ATTACH] And here are those same figures in absolute numbers -- 10% of 40,000,000 people is a LOT of people! [TABLE] [TR] [TH][LEFT]Age[/LEFT][/TH] [TH][LEFT]Percentage[/LEFT][/TH] [TH][LEFT]Numbers[/LEFT][/TH] [/TR] [TR] [TD]8-12[/TD] [TD]12%[/TD] [TD]4.8 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]13-17[/TD] [TD]13%[/TD] [TD]5.2 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]18-24[/TD] [TD]15%[/TD] [TD]6 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]25-29[/TD] [TD]15%[/TD] [TD]6 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]30-34[/TD] [TD]19%[/TD] [TD]7.6 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]35-39[/TD] [TD]15%[/TD] [TD]6 million[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]40-45[/TD] [TD]11%[/TD] [TD]4.4 million[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] [SIZE=7][B]Gender[/B][/SIZE] 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. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 12.08.51 AM.png"]121345[/ATTACH] [SIZE=7][B]Geography[/B][/SIZE] 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. [TABLE] [TR] [TD]United States[/TD] [TD]3,376,839 users[/TD] [TD]59.14%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]United Kingdom (yay!)[/TD] [TD]478,217 users[/TD] [TD]8.38%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Canada[/TD] [TD]411,179 users[/TD] [TD]7.2%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Australia[/TD] [TD]198,922 users[/TD] [TD]3.48%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Brazil[/TD] [TD]125,682 users[/TD] [TD]2.2%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Germany[/TD] [TD]109,248 users[/TD] [TD]1.91%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Italy[/TD] [TD]95,682 users[/TD] [TD]1.68%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Netherlands[/TD] [TD]74,139 users[/TD] [TD]1.3%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Sweden[/TD] [TD]51,479 users[/TD] [TD]0.9%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Spain[/TD] [TD]47,096 users[/TD] [TD]0.82%[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] The list goes on for pages, but we're under 1% now. The average EN World reader is male, American, between 25-34. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's
Top