Dungeons, Dragons, and Demographics

[Fifth Element]

One reason older folks may be less likely to embrace 4E is that they can't put the effort into learning a new system that younger people can. Though I won't be so arrogant as to assume that I *know* the reason for the trends.

Edit: Oh yeah. 31. Started with BECMI/1E, like the look of 4E.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm 27, I started playing with Second Edition (technically I had the "BECMI" Basic Set and then one First Edition setting book, Dragonlance Adventures, before that, but I didn't play with them), and I like the look of Fourth Edition.

 

[Hussar]

Of course, it also shows that WOTC may be losing 30% of their D&D players, without any guarantee they'll be able to get kids raised on MMORPGs interested in tabletop play.

From a sales point of view, that's a catastrophe. If your customer base shrinks to 70% of what it was, it's time to seriously re-think your business model.

ROTF

The average age of an MMORPG gamer is TWENTY SIX! Never mind that half are female and about half are married and have children.

What are these "children raised on MMORPG's" you keep talking about?

 

[Clavis]

ROTF

The average age of an MMORPG gamer is TWENTY SIX! Never mind that half are female and about half are married and have children.

Damn! I was going to start playing WoW, to hook up with some single chicks. Now you tell me they're all married! Well, maybe some of them are poly!

Incidentally, one of the gamers in my regular group is a pregnant married female with one kid already, and yes, she plays WoW. I don't recall ever questioning whether MMORPGs had a lot of female players.

What are these "children raised on MMORPG's" you keep talking about?

I think I only mentioned them once. I guess I would say 15-23 years olds. Since Everquest (remember Everquest?) was released in 1999, that would put them as kids raised on MMORPGs.

Yes, I consider 23 year olds to be "kids". Considering the stupid things I and everybody I know did and believed at that age, I wouldn't consider 23 year olds really grown up yet.

Now please get up off the floor. I just waxed it.

 

[Hairfoot]

There are so many options that the results are well-neigh meaningless.

Well, it's establishing the three factors: age of player, edition first played, and current attitude to 4e. I think Firelance's number crunch is the real juice.


Some points:

1. 1e is the option for all editions prior to AD&D

2. There is no "undecided" option because it would return a result of 99.9% undecided. Most people will make their final judgement when it's released, but the poll is to establish a snapshot of now.

3. Yes - many, tiny options. I didn't know a more efficient way of doing it. The results will be skewed because every third vote is for an unintended option!

4. Many thanks to Firelance for the Excel work.

 

[Shroomy]

I'm 31 and apparently cannot select poll answers correctly because I picked the wrong one. However, I started with the BECMI Red Box Set, bought all the rest, caught the tail end of 1e, moved into 2e but quit once I went to college...came back to 3.5e in 2005 after 11 years. I'm looking forward to 4e.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

I voted "I don't like the look of 4e" but I want to clarify that almost all of the rules changes look great -- it's the fluff changes I don't like.

 

[Dormammu]

The average age of an MMORPG gamer is TWENTY SIX! Never mind that half are female and about half are married and have children.

This is fairly far from accurate. Someone just posted the official WoW statistics in another thread and it's like 1 in 6 female.

 

[Jack99]

This is fairly far from accurate. Someone just posted the official WoW statistics in another thread and it's like 1 in 6 female.

I seriously doubt said average age too. Maybe it's the average of the owners of the accounts, but that would simply come from the fact that many kids too young for having a credit card might get their account paid via mum's or dad's.

 

[Zweischneid]

Here's how the numbers stand after 422 votes. Again, numbers in parentheses are the number of people falling into each category:

Overall (422): 70.38% like

Started with 1e (254): 64.17% like
Started with 2e (114): 79.82% like
Started with 3e (54): 79.63% like

Age 12-25 (84): 78.57% like
Age 26-35 (216): 73.15% like
Age 35+ (122): 59.84% like

Uh... so 70.38% of 422 people would be 297.0036 people!

Percentages going as far as stating 1/10 and even 1/100 of a percentage point in a poll involving barely 500 people seems rather excessive.. not to mention faking an amount of accuracy that's simply not there. Given the error margins on this, I doubt one could nail this down to one or two full percentage points with precision.