Do you live in a good gamer city?

[diaglo]

atlanta's got a good size gamer community. both on meetup and not on meetup. i'd say at least in my experience it is about right.

 

[mcrow]

I have never had a problem finding gamers in MN.

I can probly have gamed with of 150 different gamers here in the last 5 years, most of them I still see around.

Minneapolis/St. Paul has a large gaming community
Rochester has a gaming community larger than one would expect from a town its size
St Cloud,Cambridge, Anoka all have good sized gaming communities.

One thing that is common among them all is that they have a really good FLGS.

 

[krissbeth]

Someone may have pointed this out already, but the flaw in the ranking is that if a city really has a vibrant and robust role playing community, there's not really any reason to use D&D Meetup. Boston has thousands of gamers and hundreds of groups, but I think many of them are organized through other social channels (game stores, colleges.) If those channels didn't exist, like they don't in some cities, I suspect the ranking might be higher.

Cool work, though.

Agreed. Although, being #42 is cool for a whole other set of nerdy reasons.

Also, Rhode Island is a whole city now? Woohoo!

 

[kenobi65]

Chicago's low on the Meetup-based list, but I wouldn't characterize it as a poor area for gamers by any stretch.

For one thing, we've got Games Plus, where Buzz & co. put on a very well-attended EN World Game Day every few months. Games Plus is a real gathering place for RPGs, CCGs, wargames, and miniatures, and the place is almost always hopping. If you want to meet gamers in Chicago, there's one right there.

Me personally, I'm in two different D&D groups, as well as being involved in the area's active RPGA/Living Greyhawk community (and, Chicago's in LG's Verbobonc region, which many consider one of the better-run regions in the campaign). In the 18 years I've lived here, I've never lacked for gaming opportunities.

About the only negative I can point out is that we don't have a significant gaming convention here (probably due to the prohibitive cost of convention & hotel space here). OTOH, we do have a Wizard World con, several smaller conventions, and GenCon Indy's only 3 hours down the road.

 

[Glyfair]

Thinking about it, I think looking at locations of gaming stores (if possible including longevity and size) will probably tell you where there is a vibrant gaming community. If there are multiple stores in a given area (or 1-2 large or successful stores) then gaming is good. If not, gaming isn't probably that widespread.

The only exceptions are likely to be oddities (military bases come to mind).

 

[fineousdfd119]

HEY I LIVE JUST SOUTH OF YOU AND H AVE BEEN TRYING SINCE 1992 TO GET A GROUP GOING. both my wife and i play, we also have 1 other from the longest group to get together. are you looking to game??

 

[freebfrost]

Just had a chance to look at the Meetup data for Columbus - it shows a whopping 31 D&D players in the Columbus area. (Interestingly, 8 of those are considered inactive accounts and only about 10 are regulars to the site).

Considering my group includes about 10 players and I know about 20 others, I've skewed the data by 100% already.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

With in a 1 mile radius of my house there are 8 gamers (including myself) about half of which I reguarly game with. With in that 1 mile radius there proably live around 4,000 people. So that means about .2% are gamers. To my knowledge none of us are signed up for said website.

While thats pretty high I doubt its that high in the rest of the area, based on what I've seen (I and others have looked for other gamers nearby and from what I've seen our small borough is the exception not the rule).

On the site I see no groups in my area. So I guess my area is pretty good and gamers can meet other gamers through more typical channels.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Cincinnati's gaming community sucks; primarily because they're all of the closed clique gaming group variety. This saddens me, as I'm a new guy in the area and don't go to college; so I have no inroads into the gamer community.

-TRRW

 

[Crothian]

Just had a chance to look at the Meetup data for Columbus - it shows a whopping 31 D&D players in the Columbus area. (Interestingly, 8 of those are considered inactive accounts and only about 10 are regulars to the site).

Considering my group includes about 10 players and I know about 20 others, I've skewed the data by 100% already.

Ya, I know more then 31 local gamers by myself!! Because we all know each other we have no need for the meetup sites

 

[Cyronax]

The DC-NoVa-MD area is nothing to scoff at either. Its got a pretty vibrant gaming population that draws a lot of different types, including many colleges from the mid-Atlantic. The only problem I've found is that everyone plays on Sundays, which makes it hard to have multiple games.

I would love to find a good mid-week bimonthly game.

Plus DDXP showed up near us recently, so I guess that might be an indicator?

C.I.D.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

College gaming groups is another good indicator, but it can be a segregated community. Most outside people aren't welcome unless they are invited guests.

SUTEKH, at least, has always tried hard to encourage non-students to participate in our activities. I mean, I was last enrolled in 2004, and I was the editor of the newsletter in 2006 . . . we maintain a good spread of people from the late teens into the early thirties, though most of the latter are postgraduates or longtime members who stick around.

 

[Thunderfoot]

The DC-NoVa-MD area is nothing to scoff at either. Its got a pretty vibrant gaming population that draws a lot of different types, including many colleges from the mid-Atlantic. The only problem I've found is that everyone plays on Sundays, which makes it hard to have multiple games.

I would love to find a good mid-week bimonthly game.

Plus DDXP showed up near us recently, so I guess that might be an indicator?

C.I.D.

Yeah and on top of all that, with the exception of D&D most of the major companies in the early formation of the "organizaed" wargaming community started in and around Baltimore, MD, and a lot of them still are here.
Chessex dice (stands for Chessapeake)
The Armoury (Used to be HQd in B'alto now a subsidiary of Chessex)
Avalon Hill was originally from the Balt'o area but of course is now owned by WotC
Games Workshop is HQ'd in Glen Burnie, which is just a stones throw away.
And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Baltimore is proabably a little higher than ranked but overall I would say the list is probably the best bit of unconfirmed research I've seen on this. Without money and focus group studies in each of the cities listed, I would say its probably the best were going to get. Hagerstown leading the way though is probably right, there is nothing else to do out that far in Maryland.

 

[Cyronax]

Yeah and on top of all that, with the exception of D&D most of the major companies in the early formation of the "organizaed" wargaming community started in and around Baltimore, MD, and a lot of them still are here.
Chessex dice (stands for Chessapeake)
The Armoury (Used to be HQd in B'alto now a subsidiary of Chessex)
Avalon Hill was originally from the Balt'o area but of course is now owned by WotC
Games Workshop is HQ'd in Glen Burnie, which is just a stones throw away.
And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Baltimore is proabably a little higher than ranked but overall I would say the list is probably the best bit of unconfirmed research I've seen on this. Without money and focus group studies in each of the cities listed, I would say its probably the best were going to get. Hagerstown leading the way though is probably right, there is nothing else to do out that far in Maryland.

All that....and more. I grew up in this area and saw a huge influx of gamers during the Tech boom. I'm not as computer savvy as some, but I do know that having AOL and other similar companies around for a few years really helped the gamer population. The post 9/11 defense-contractor boom definetely helped as well.

Just look on Gamers seeking Gamers in this forum to prove the point. This region is sometimes about 1/5 of the respondents.

Plus this is the Living Greyhawk region of Geoff. That's quite a community I've recently found out. I hope to get more involved.

C.I.D.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Hey, that's what brought me here. (Military at that non-existant place of employment) As a displaced midwesterner it has been no secret that my overall opinion of hospitality on the east coast is just this side of assualt and battery, but hey, you all give great game.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

1 gamer in a small town (500 people) is .5% of the population

1000 gamers in Boston (aprox. 600,000 people) is .167% of the population

So even thought it is a smaller percentage of the population, I think I would have a better chance of finding gamers in Boston.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Hey, that's what brought me here. (Military at that non-existant place of employment) As a displaced midwesterner it has been no secret that my overall opinion of hospitality on the east coast is just this side of assualt and battery, but hey, you all give great game.

And that's how we treat people we like.

 

[grodog]

I'm surprised that KCMO was on the list at all. Beyond minis games and Magic it seems like my corner of the metro is a gaming wasteland.

QFT. I've been trying to find a group here for a while, and it seems like the place is dead.

You guys might want to check out http://www.kcguild.com/Con/ and http://www.sekgg.org/ for KC and greater-eastern KS gaming discussion/cons/sites.

 

[grodog]

I'm shocked that Santa Clara County scored as high as it did (37). I've had a terrible time finding players and games. Then again, perhaps living in Indianapolis (11) and Denver/Aurora (20) spoiled me.

Griffith Draognlake, if you're not familiar with the Critical Hit forum and Bay Area RPS site @ http://www.cilibrin.net/rolldice/index.php and http://www.bayrps.com/ you may want to check them out. Local cons include DunDraCon, KublaCon, and ConQuest (all have site, too).

Despite several stores closing over the past few years, the Bay Area remains one of the most vibrant gaming communities I've ever been part of.

 

[grodog]

From a demographics model, I would be more inclined to rank cities using the WotC pre-3.0 marketing data, and US Census figures. I worked up such numbers for the local Wichita gaming scene a little while ago, on our listserv:

Based on simple population demographics and the old WotC marketing survey, Wichita should be have at least 20,000 once-gamers and at least 10,000 active gamers. These figures are dervied from:

- WotC figures @
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/WotCMarketResearchSummary.html
- 6% of the US population have ever played rpg games, and at least 3% play once a month or more
- USA population in 2000 is 281,421,906 (rounded to 280 million)
- Wichita population in 2000 is 344,284 (rounded to 344,000)

Using those figures, you should be able to estimate the potential number of casual and current/dedicated gamers in each metro area.