D&D is an Adult Game?

[Orius]

Same here. Bingo and shuffleboard are poor replacements for gaming.

I can see the conversations already: complaining about how kids of the 2040s have their motion-controlled virtual reality games, when all we had were a joystick or Nintendo control pads with just two buttons, or their VR D&D games, when we just had pencils, paapr and dice colored in with crayons, and we played those games uphill both ways and we liked it!.

 

[Lanefan]

I realize that I made a mistake here.

Content =/= marketing. That's totally my bad too because I brought up content in the initial post. The content inside the game is not what I meant. And I totally did not mean that D&D was immature or anything like that as a pasttime. Again, I can see how people could get that from my first post, and, again, totally my bad.

My question is solely about the marketing. Gygaxian prose notwithstanding, 1e was not marketed anywhere other than in teen circles. Comic books, cartoons, TV ads that show teens playing (often with their families), that sort of thing.

Where I'm trying to get at that the marketing should reflect the content; and both should be aimed at college-age and higher. That's all.

BTW, Lanefan, do you know why they put the cut off at 35 for 3e? It's because their research showed that after 35, the vast majority of players stop spending money on the hobby. Yes, I know some are the exception, but, this is what they found out. After 35, it doesn't matter what your game looks like, people don't spend money on gaming. So, 3e was designed for people who were going to buy a new game. Playstyles and whatnot had very little to do with it at all. It was all about the money.

billd96 links to the research and I think has you trumped here; but read the research write-up he linked to and see for yourself.

But even that isn't what really irks me. Money or not, older players would on the whole play the game slightly differently. They would more likely have longer-lasting and more stable playing groups, leading to longer-lasting campaigns and - probably - more rules tweaking due to sheer familiarity. But their research throws all that out, giving them (somewhat false) backing to design the game differently than it otherwise might have been.

And as for money, while we may not be examples of the norm I'd say our gaming crew (mostly in the 40-50 age range now, so 30-40 then) has collectively spent more per year on the game over the last 5 years than at any other time in our lives. I certainly know I have.

Lanefan

 

[jmucchiello]

How is it I've never seen this in 30 years of gaming? What publications did it run in?

 

[Hussar]

D&D was marketed to adults simply by being advertised in gaming magazines. Teenagers do not buy a lot of magazines. Even teen-oriented things, like RPGs or video games, in magazines are likely to skew toward older individuals with steady salaries and a well-developed interest that grew over time. D&D orginally grew out of wargames, so the original advertising definitely appeared in publications aimed at adults.

During the 80s, D&D became a fad, and like most fads, filtered down rapidly to young teenagers. Thus, it made sense to market it to a younger crowd, the thinking being that if you can hook them young, you have a customer for life.

But things like 25 Years of Dungeons & Dragons, or the preview books, those are for adult fans, not teenagers.

Well, I dunno. Dragon had 2 surveys in the time I subscribed, and both put the readership at an average age of about 22. That certainly counts as a younger audience to me.

Bill - I'm going by what Ryan Dancey said in an interview with Fear the Boot. He stated that people's buying tails off dramatically after 35.

And, really, think about it. How many NEW gamers do you know over the age of 35? How many gamers have you ever met that started playing after the age of 35? 35 year old gamers (or older) are probably like us - they've been playing for years, if not decades.

So, it's not really a surprise to me that almost all the marketing has been targeted at the 15-25 demographic.

Hobo - I already withdrew my comments about content.

Meh, I guess people just disagree and maybe I'm chasing ghosts here. I've never once seen D&D, in any version, marketed to an older crowd. Nor have I seen any effort to gain players in the 35+ market. It's always been the game for the 15-25 market, at least marketing wise, and nothing has particularly changed IMO.

 

[Mark]

I think most people understand that "adult" generally means 17 or 18 and older. That marketing efforts might also include a couple of years prior than that does not change that the game is primarily marketed (and written) for adults.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Well, I dunno. Dragon had 2 surveys in the time I subscribed, and both put the readership at an average age of about 22. That certainly counts as a younger audience to me.

22 counts as a younger audience?

What on earth counts as an adult audience then? Middle aged men?

Why did you even start this thread if you openly state now that you cannot be convinced?

 

[Hussar]

Mark - I think that's the disconnect. To me, an "adult audience" is not 15-25. It's the 25-45 demographic. I think of 15-25 to be mostly students to be honest.

If people are treating 22 as an "older" audience, then fair enough. I think I've repeated more than a few times that I thought that 15-25 was the primary focus of the marketing of any edition. See, I've always subscribed to the definition that young adult=16-21, or 15-25, thereabouts. To me 22 is very much a young adult.

Ok, fair enough. This explains the disconnect much better. We're all talking about the same things, I'm just working from a different definition. Cool.

 

[BryonD]

Mark - I think that's the disconnect. To me, an "adult audience" is not 15-25. It's the 25-45 demographic. I think of 15-25 to be mostly students to be honest.

If people are treating 22 as an "older" audience, then fair enough. I think I've repeated more than a few times that I thought that 15-25 was the primary focus of the marketing of any edition. See, I've always subscribed to the definition that young adult=16-21, or 15-25, thereabouts. To me 22 is very much a young adult.

Ok, fair enough. This explains the disconnect much better. We're all talking about the same things, I'm just working from a different definition. Cool.

So 22 year olds are "young adults", but somehow these are not "adults".

If you think of 25 year olds as a group as students, then your assessment is based on bad data. Even those 25+ yr old that are still in school are commonly refered to as "adult students". Simply pursing education does not make one a non-adult, and even by this standard, the label of "student" applies only to a very small percentage.

If the median age had been 28 would you have simply declared 15-30 as "non-adults"? After all, you can bracket any age you want into a group that starts at 15.

Would you agree that a "different definition" that disagrees with everyone else's defintion of the same term would be better described as an "incorrect defintion"?

 

[pawsplay]

Well, I dunno. Dragon had 2 surveys in the time I subscribed, and both put the readership at an average age of about 22. That certainly counts as a younger audience to me.

It's adult. And assuming a normal distribution, you would have as many 30-year-olds as 14-year olds, which is older enough. But in fact, I'm going to guess there is a large mass of 17-21 year old players, a fat median around 22, and a long tail of older gamers.

 

[Hussar]

BryonD - Young adult IS defined as 16-21. I admit that I broadened it a bit. Adult is often defined as 25-45, so, I'm not all that far off.

I was questioning when D&D had actually been marketed to what I consider adults - the 25-45 crowd. I didn't realize that people were using the legal defintion of adult - 18+. Perhaps we should use the definition which claims that adulthood is 13+?

The point of all of this, is that D&D has never been marketed to the over thirty crowd. Is that clearer?