Dungeons & Dragons has 15 Million Players in NA Alone; Storyline Is "The Da Vinci Code meets Gangs o

Interesting. The following tidbit has me excited about the new storyline:

“The Stream of Many Eyes” ... story — which will be revealed on June 1 — was described by one D&D staffer as 'The Da Vinci Code meets Gangs of New York.'”

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Well, granting for a moment that the minor market research claims that WotC made to this reporter are worthy of hard skepticism, what would be their motivation to mislead? Who benefits, and how? The only benefit they stand to make with inflating these numbers would be with potential business partners attracted by the potential market of players. These potential partners would doubtless require access to hard data before handing over cash. So, they would only benefit if they could back up their claims with hard data, this removing any motivation to be dishonest.

They certainly aren't saying these things to excite or impression people on message boards.

Why? Why do you and others have such a hard-on for proving them to be liars. Do you prefer the game to be doing worse? Do you have a conspiracy theory obsession? Were you lied to too much as a kid by other gaming companies and now you cannot believe any of them?

 

[Parmandur]

Why? Why do you and others have such a hard-on for proving them to be liars. Do you prefer the game to be doing worse? Do you have a conspiracy theory obsession? Were you lied to too much as a kid by other gaming companies and now you cannot believe any of them?

Re-read my post, dude, I was making the exact opposite point. Clearly the game is doing amazing, and WotC has zero reason to make up numbers that they can well establish with basic market research. If they say there are ~15 million players, 40% of whom are female, there is zero logical reason to doubt them.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

To build buzz and enthusiasm around the brand and maybe create a blip in the mainstream news cycle. And, it's hardly 'mislead' in the sense of dishonesty, just presenting in the best light - 'spin' at worst.

I'm sure they are taking the most generous interpretation of the numbers they can for exactly the reasons you state, but as a friend of mine who knows the publishing industry told me, essentially, however you cut it, their sales figures on Amazon alone are impressive.

If you want an illustration, I work by the Amazon store on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue in NYC and they've had 5E books featured in the window....

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Re-read my post, dude, I was making the exact opposite point. Clearly the game is doing amazing, and WotC has zero reason to make up numbers that they can well establish with basic market research. If they say there are ~15 million players, 40% of whom are female, there is zero logical reason to doubt them.

I'm guessing that most of the "players" are people have had fairly minimal contact, not what people on a game board would count as "regular players". Furthermore, WotC has a tendency to lump Neverwinter players in with TTRPG players. Both of these things make their numbers a lot rosier than tighter definitions of "players" would be. But yeah, I don't think they're outright making things up and there has clearly been a growth in female players. Most of my objection to comments on this thread are about people who clearly know nothing about survey methodology spouting off.

 

[Parmandur]

To build buzz and enthusiasm around the brand and maybe create a blip in the mainstream news cycle. And, it's hardly 'mislead' in the sense of dishonesty, just presenting in the best light - 'spin' at worst.

Well, sure, they'll put out numbers that are favorable, but they have every financial and legal incentive to not make numbers up, and at least approximate numbers are quite achievable with a little research.

 

[ad_hoc]

I'm guessing that most of the "players" are people have had fairly minimal contact, not what people on a game board would count as "regular players". Furthermore, WotC has a tendency to lump Neverwinter players in with TTRPG players. Both of these things make their numbers a lot rosier than tighter definitions of "players" would be. But yeah, I don't think they're outright making things up and there has clearly been a growth in female players. Most of my objection to comments on this thread are about people who clearly know nothing about survey methodology spouting off.

In early 2017 Chris Cocks estimated there were 9.5 million active players of the tabletop game worldwide.

2017 was a great year for D&D and now we're halfway through 2018. The new estimates are 12-15 million in North America.

The Amazon sales rankings corroborate this as they continue to rise.

Nothing in the numbers are shocking to me. The truth is, long time hobby gamers are now a minority of D&D players. They no longer represent the player base. Forum goers even less so.

 

[Gibili]

What ever the quality of the raw data or the stats derived from it, if the underlying trend is that the hobby is attracting a larger and broader audience, that can only be a great thing.
My group is all male. It is a bunch of guys that met at university 30 years ago and hasn't stopped playing since. There was a woman who played with us for a while in the early days, but not since. Many in the group have played outside this group and certainly in more recent years, that has definitely included a growing number of women. I was involved in a group that consisted of 2 men and 5 women, including my wife. It was great fun, because at its heart, the game is about getting together with people you like, having a laugh and being creative to boot. The more variety of sex, religion, race, age...insert group name here, the better. I think the world would be a far happier place if more people played. Roleplaying's ability to bring people together and its theraputic benefits should not be underestimated...now there's a good topic for an article Morrus (bet it's already been done a thousand time though)

I think the rise of popularity probably also coincides with the considerable rise of e-sports, the number of audio and video streams of people playing, of both sexes, different ages etc all of which leads to a critical mass of acceptability where the hobby moves from the being the domain of a few, seen as being on the extremes of society, to a part of being the norm.
Interetsingly I was listening to a sports radio programme last night, talking about the new 100 ball version of cricket, and how sport now has to seriously compete with things like newer, exciting pasttimes like e-sports for its audience, something sport hasn't really had to do before, and I'm sure pasttimes like roleplaying will also come into that category. Of course we've been taking performance enhancing drugs in our hobby for years...it's called beer!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, sure, they'll put out numbers that are favorable, but they have every financial and legal incentive to not make numbers up, and at least approximate numbers are quite achievable with a little research.

The financial/marketing and legal can maybe be at odds at times, and the line between making numbers up and making estimates in the face of inevitably-uncertain statistics can be pretty thin, but, yeah, my point was it would be silly to assume they're lying, and silly to assume they're not presenting data selectively to put the brand in the best possible - but still plausible to the intended audience - light.
Of course, the intended audience isn't always the obvious one. These stats could be intended more for media or mainstream consumption than for hardcore fan dissection...

 

[BookBarbarian]

Of course, the intended audience isn't always the obvious one. These stats could be intended more for media or mainstream consumption than for hardcore fan dissection...

What?!

Don't you know all press releases about things I'm interested in are meant for me and me alone!

/sarcasm for those that have trouble picking it up

 

[JohnnyZemo]

Please can we divide this into two different threads, i went through 13 pages mainly discussing boring (to me) sales and Population statistics, with three interesting Posts on the Content and what gangs of new York / da Vinci code means!

Well, we know the launch stream is going to be called the "Stream of Many Eyes," which (best guess) means that a beholder or beholders will be involved. The Gangs of New York reference makes me wonder if Xanathar will be important to the plot in some way.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, we know the launch stream is going to be called the "Stream of Many Eyes," which (best guess) means that a beholder or beholders will be involved. The Gangs of New York reference makes me wonder if Xanathar will be important to the plot in some way.

Whelp, the Xanathar is the Beholder pictured in the announcement, so signs point to maybe.

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=6780330]Parmandur[/MENTION] #147 That cannot be, i slew him on my Computer 100 times back in the nineties of the last century so he got to be a death tyrant by now if he reappears!

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

What ever the quality of the raw data or the stats derived from it, if the underlying trend is that the hobby is attracting a larger and broader audience,

My guess is that they're taking the most charitable interpretation they can make of the numbers they have, which would suggest they have some double counts and people who played once or twice and aren't "regular players".

But forget about that.

Just look at the fact that their books are routinely pretty high sellers on Amazon should say that a lot of books are being moved. As of today, Xanthar's is #132 in Books, the PHB is #43, and WotC's RPG team is the #86 author in the top 100.

As to why D&D is having its moment right now... I dunno, but here are some speculations. There have been a lot of things that pushed it slowly towards the mainstream: WoW did a pretty brisk business for a while. Star Wars has had a substantial renaissance (dubious IMO but they sell well). Fantasy movies used to be cheesy and campy swords and sorcery tales full of T&A, but Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies opened those doors up. Harry Potter sold a lot of books---J. K. Rowling is the #1 author on Amazon---and a whole lot of girls bought those books.

I think we have to be careful to make the D&D renaissance seem inevitable with the Goggles of Hindsight though.

 

[vecna00]

Exactly, 3.x was good and successful, but the point in question was why there weren't articles, posts, etc. like we are seeing now with 5E: because it wasn't this big, riding this sort of wave. Things have changed.

I'm only 10 pages deep here, so if this was answered later, my apologies!

My guess as to why we're seeing these articles would be due to WotC being owned by Hasbro. Large, publicly traded companies release this kind of information to instill confidence in their shareholders. I don't know if WotC was a public or private company, so I don't know if this was something they used to do. It could just be that there is a better flow of information these day if they did release this info, or maybe we actually care about such a thing these days.

But my money is Hasbro, like many large companies, do this this sort of thing a lot. Hell, look at the large video game companies, they have quarterly earning's calls where they release this kind of data.

 

[Staffan]

I'm only 10 pages deep here, so if this was answered later, my apologies!

My guess as to why we're seeing these articles would be due to WotC being owned by Hasbro.

Wizards has been owned by Hasbro since September 1999 - so, before the release of 3e. They did post some "Look at how well we're doing" back then, although usually in a less formal format - things like designers posting "The first printing of the PHB sold out way faster than expected so we're going back for a reprint already." You also had designers and other company representatives take part directly in discussion on message boards, mailing lists, and even Usenet, but that was more of an informal thing.

 

[vecna00]

Wizards has been owned by Hasbro since September 1999 - so, before the release of 3e. They did post some "Look at how well we're doing" back then, although usually in a less formal format - things like designers posting "The first printing of the PHB sold out way faster than expected so we're going back for a reprint already." You also had designers and other company representatives take part directly in discussion on message boards, mailing lists, and even Usenet, but that was more of an informal thing.

Was it that long ago? *looks* Holy crap, I thought it was like mid-2000's when it happened.