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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 1526857" data-attributes="member: 3433">From what I've seen, people of different ages have different interests.  Hobbies that they enjoyed in their younger years tend to be the ones they return to in their later years.  I'm basing these statements on my interactions with people of varying ages that I've discussed gaming with.  I live in the upper midwest and most of my contacts live in smaller cities or even rural areas, so this information may be skewed by my geographics.In general, the retired people I've met (or at least ones 60+) have no clue about RPGs and even trying to explain it to them is difficult.  When I ask what hobbies they like to do, they tend to mention activities like gardening, playing cribbage, cards, fishing, travelling, crafts, visiting friends and family, and so forth.  Given their amount of free time, these are the activities they seek to do.  While I expect a few of them might enjoy RPGs, I've yet to find any that are even willing to try.I've gamed with one fellow in his 50's, but most people in the mid 50's to 60's range tend to not be very inclined to consider RPGs either.  Many of these people are working, and have families, though many tend to be empty-nesters with somewhat more disposable income to work with than younger people might have.  When asked about their hobbies, I hear things like watching TV, movies, reading, golf, and so forth are often mentioned.  Once in a while they mention something computer-related, even games, but this tends to be uncommon.  Some of the people I know in this age bracket are very creative and have active imaginations, but for some reason, RPG stuff just doesn't seem to catch on for them.I'm going to group the 30's to early-mid 50's crowd together.  This is in my opinion, the core of old-school gamers.  These are folks that were 20-something or younger when D&D came out, and many of them tried it and were hooked.  At the time, there weren't a lot of other fantasy-type games available, so this became the game of choice.  A lot of them still play games, though it might just be computer games or non-rpg stuff.  This is where a bulk of the people that I've met and gamed with come from.  These tend to be very dedicated RPG players.  I suspect this is also a fair chunk of the revenue stream for WotC as well.  It may be hard to grow this base, but I suspect there are still some folks in this bracket that would play D&D that aren't currently.The younger crowd (30's and below) are IMHO the new-school gamers.  Most of them probably never played in the glory days of 1e or the classic modules.  And they're gaming time has had to compete against more and more other gaming options (playstation, xbox, computer rpgs, trading card games, etc).  While they are often hard-core gamers, they aren't as dedicated to RPGs.Which of those audiences are the best to target?  I think WotC would be wasting money if they tried to sell to the retired folks.  No matter how many advertisements they put in AARP magazine, it likely won't generate a single sale.  I think they are already doing a fair job of marketing to the younger audience which is clearly important.  They could probably target the 30 to 50 crowd a bit more, but I'm not sure if that will really find all that many new players.</blockquote>

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