How big's the RPG market?

How big is the RPG market? Pretty damn tiny, is the answer. As of 2016/2017 it's about $35m in size, according to ICv2. That's of a Hobby Games market currently worth just over a billion dollars. The RPG segment is a mere 2.9% of the overall Hobby Games market, which includes boardgames, miniatures, hobby card games, and collectible games. Of course, the competition for RPGs isn't just boardgames or card games, it's entertainment; and on that scale, the RPG market is a tiny niche of the Hobby Games market, which is a tiny niche of the global entertainment market. Note that these figures are US and Canada only, and include Kickstarter sales.

UPDATE: the below $1.19B figure has since been revised upwards by ICv2 to $1.4B in 2017, with an RPG segment of $45M.

The hobby games market as a whole is the size of one major movie blockbuster. The global film industry market was 38.3 billion in 2015. Putting that into perspective:

The video game industry is even bigger, at $91B in 2016.

However, the entire hobby games market is growing year on year. Just look at the latest stats: the market has grown from $700M in 2013 to $1.19B in 2016/2017. Of that, RPGs have more than doubled in size, from $15M to $35M. Boardgames have over tripled in size. There is definitely a tabletop boom going on right now, powered by a number of factors ranging from Kickstarter, to the introduction of US West Coast media (shows like Tabletop and outlets like Geek & Sundry have helped to mainstream tabletop gaming), and more.

Data from ICv2 and other sources.

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[Jer]

So there's a massive freeloader problem.

Not really? That's how games work in general outside of the video game, miniature or collectable gaming spheres.

If we sit down to play Settlers of Catan it's rare that everyone at the table owns a copy of Settler's of Catan. Generally only one or two of us own a copy, and we're only going to be playing with one of them anyway so it doesn't matter. The other 3 players at the table aren't "freeloaders" if they don't own their own copy of the game - they're necessary ingredients for me to get my enjoyment out of the one copy of the game that I've purchased.

Likewise if I'm playing D&D with 4 other people at the table and I as the DM own a ton of books but only one of the others owns a Player's Handbook and the other 3 are using characters made with the Basic Rules, that doesn't make the other 3 "freeloaders" - it makes them necessary ingredients for me to get my enjoyment out of the one copy of the books that I've purchased. You can't play the game without other people after all.

Also think about that 15 million people figure for a bit. That's everyone who plays D&D, which I suspect means all editions and not just 5e, but for the sake of the argument assume it's just all 5e players. That 35 million figure is an annual figure (tracked from 2016/2017). So even if that 15 million figure were all 5e D&D players and even if every 5e player owns a Player's Handbook, then many of them would STILL have contributed $0 to that $35 million figure because they made that one time purchase in 2014 or 2015 and haven't bought anything since. Are they freeloaders? They've paid for a book but still aren't going to be included in that number.

The upshot of this is that there are far, far more D&D players than there are D&D customers. (But again that's something that's true for most games).

 

[Jamie Myers]

thank you. This was useful

 

[delericho]

So there's a massive freeloader problem.

Not really.

As the OP notes, the RPG market is tiny. That means that the value isn't actually in people buying product - if it was, Hasbro would have cancelled D&D long ago.

But the real value in D&D lies in the brand, and that benefits very significantly from those 15 million people playing - probably more than from the 1-2 million who have actually bought something.

(Indeed, if you could persuade WotC that by giving away the PHB for free to anyone who wants one, they'd guarantee that the upcoming movie did $1B business, they'd probably go for it. Though good luck making that case. )

Don't get me wrong - WotC would certainly rather see D&D do well than do badly, and they're probably over the moon about 5e's success. But I doubt they're particularly concerned that only a relatively small number of players have actually bought the latest PHB.

 

[generic]

The vast majority of players buy nothing for the game. Further, of those who do buy something, the vast majority buy the PHB and then nothing else.

(WotC estimate ~15M players in North America, while the PHB has probably sold somewhere between 1 and 2 million copies. Further, WotC's aspiration is that each of their supplements will shift 100k units.)

Heh, well I know this is true. I (of course) don't resent them for it, but most (not quite all) of the players at my table neither own nor have any inclination of purchasing even the Player's Handbook, let alone an additional supplement like Xanathar's Guide. What have you experienced?

 

[delericho]

Heh, well I know this is true. I (of course) don't resent them for it, but most (not quite all) of the players at my table neither own nor have any inclination of purchasing even the Player's Handbook, let alone an additional supplement like Xanathar's Guide. What have you experienced?

Very much a mix.

The group I'm with have many GMs and play quite a lot of different games. So the tendency is that for any game other than D&D, the GM buys one or more books for the game but the players generally don't bother - it doesn't make sense to buy a book for a game you'll only play a few times.

For D&D (and to a lesser extent Pathfinder), because these get played much more often, it makes some sense for players to buy-in. In this case, maybe half of players get the PHB and nothing else. The people who are DMs as well as players will get the core 3, and may well get some of the supplements also.

(Funnily enough, in my previous group we played 3.5e for years and nobody except me bought any books. With the advent of 4e, the players in the group finally caved and everyone bought a PHB... only to find that we really didn't like it, played it once, and never again. Oops!)

 

[Jester David]

So there's a massive freeloader problem.

How many PHBs are at your table? How many copies of the Monster Manual? How many adventures or Tome of Foes?
Does everyone really have one?

Most people also only buy the core rules if anything. So revenue for that 15 million people is spread out over the PHB sales of the entire lifetime of the game. The group that bought the rules in 2014 might contribute very little to the revenue in 2017.

 

[Ted Serious]

How many PHBs are at your table? How many copies of the Monster Manual? How many adventures or Tome of Foes?
Does everyone really have one?

Most people also only buy the core rules if anything. So revenue for that 15 million people is spread out over the PHB sales of the entire lifetime of the game. The group that bought the rules in 2014 might contribute very little to the revenue in 2017.

There are piles of books at my table and more on shelves.

 

[Jester David]

There are piles of books at my table and more on shelves.

That is vague and non-helpful.

So let me try again: how many 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbooks are owned by the players of your gaming group(s)?

 

[LordEntrails]

My group has one copy of; PHB, MM, DMG, Volos, Xanathars, SCAG, STK, LMoP, & ToA.

No second copies of anything. Everything is owned in Fantasy Grounds. We can all access it simultaneously, from anywhere. No need for a second copy of anything.

Of course, we have multiple copies of some things from 4E, 3.5, 3E, 2E, AD&D, OD&D...

 

[SpiralBound]

The inherent "freeloader" aspect of RPGs is one of the reasons why I believe the RPG industry will always be much smaller than other segments of the hobby industry. If only 1 in 4 (or even 1 in 2) RPG players are customers, then the profitability of producing RPG products is accordingly lower than the same commercial investment in a hobby industry where all players are customers. Take CCGs like MtG, 99% of the time, each player has purchased their own decks to play. With computer/console games, each player is also a customer.

If you are a company looking to make money from a target market and you look at RPGs with 15 million players in North America, but only 3.75 to 7.5 million of them are likely to be customers, and you then compare it to another market with a 1 for 1 player to customer ratio, it gets a lot harder to justify the expense, or more to the point harder to turn down the potential added revenue to be gained from targeting the other market instead. It also explains why most RPG companies are staffed by people who genuinely love the RPG hobby. If they didn't love it so much, they'd be involved in some more profitable venture instead.