D&D (2024) I am highly skeptical of the Unreal VTT

[Ruin Explorer]

This is a way of finding. WotC claims there are 60 millions of D&D players.


Roll20 claims to have 10 millions accounts, and in their report posted here, a little over half plays 5e. That's 5 millions for roll20. But that's accounts ever created, not players, so that's the high-end estimate.

Fantasy grounds published in their report that they had 95,000 sessions in January 2021 (a little old, I know). In the "best case" they were all active users who play once a month, so there is no duplicate. That's, assuming 6 players per session, a little under one million.

I don't know the relative market share of VTT but those heavyweight are still dwarfed by the general 5e market.



I concur.

WotC also said D&D Beyond had 10 million registered users at the time they bought it.

Those are relatively high-value as well because you can only register with Twitch, Google, or Apple accounts (and Twitch is now deprecated I believe).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

VTT technology keeps getting better but I think it's a long way off from replacing normal games. One it's just not there yet. Two As great as it sounds it'll be more prep for the DM unless he buy's prepackaged adventures. Can you imagine wearing one of those helmets for an 3 hour game session? No thanks.

Oh! I agree I am thinking 2030 and beyond.

 

[Reynard]

This is a way of finding. WotC claims there are 60 millions of active D&D players.


Roll20 claims to have 10 millions accounts, and in their report posted here, a little over half plays 5e. That's 5 millions for roll20. But that's accounts ever created, not players, so that's the high-end estimate (some people might have tried once, then never again).

Fantasy grounds published in their report that they had 95,000 sessions in January 2021 (a little old, I know), a record then. In the "best case" they were all active users who play once a month, so there is no duplicate. That's, assuming 6 players per session, a little under one million. Let's say a million to account for the increase in the market share.

I don't know the relative market share of VTT but those heavyweights are still dwarfed by the general 5e market (foundry vtt is often mentionned as well but I didn't find any numbers from them with a quick search).



I concur.

Emphasis mine.
One quibble: that is not what WotC claims. it claims some number (50 or 60 million) HAVE played D&D. I don't know that I have heard them suggest how many active players there are (because how could they possibly know?).

 

[Nikosandros]

Hmm, my feeling is you'd be surprised how much takes place online, especially since COVID and the potential inertia of getting groups back around the table who have discovered that (IMO) the game works perfectly well with a VTT or on the end of a Skype call. I'd guess more than that.

My experience exactly. Before Covid, I was quite skeptical of online gaming. I had some not so great experienced in the past. However, when Italy went into a strict lock-down, I had no choice but to try again. This time, since my ADSL connection was having problems, I finally switched to optical fiber and the overall experience was a revelation. Now, I've yet to play again in person. There is just an enormous convenience in gaming online. I'm sure I'll play again in person during a weekend or at a con, but I think that my days of driving somewhere during the week-evenings to game are more or less over.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Emphasis mine.
One quibble: that is not what WotC claims. it claims some number (50 or 60 million) HAVE played D&D. I don't know that I have heard them suggest how many active players there are (because how could they possibly know?).

Honestly, I don't know. However, I seem to remember a Bloomberg article before the pandemics when they claimed to have 40 millions people playing annually. I agree that "annually" doesn't sound very active, but it doesn't seem to be a "once in a lifetime try" either. I'll try to find the source again.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't think that's really WotC's goal, though, to be fair.

I think their actual goal here is the same goal they had with the 4E VTT (given literally everything they're saying is similar to the 4E rhetoric), which is not to target existing groups as much as people who aren't able to play and/or aren't able to play regularly. They're not dumb enough to come out and outright say that this time (when they did with 4E, it was misinterpreted as "4E wants to be WoW" in a literal, gameplay sense), but my expectation is that they also push matchmaking and so on, and try and get people playing D&D specifically through their VTT who wouldn't otherwise be playing D&D. Those people are going to be much more loyal to them, and much more invested in the VTT ecosystem. People who just use it could always just stop using it, or even swap to another VTT and keep using their physical books and so on. But if you have someone who doesn't even have physical books, who maybe hasn't even played D&D outside of a VTT, then you've got someone who is going to be much happier to pay for virtual minis, virtual dice, for whom the idea of only being able to build a dungeon using pre-existing blocks isn't "heresy", but just "how it's done" and so on.

Sure it'll also get some people who use VTTs sometimes using it, but I doubt we're the main audience, longer-term, given the strategy they're employing.

How are they going to give these people a game? Hire professional DMs? Beautiful terrain and minis aside, unless this is easy for a DM to set up it is going nowhere. FantasyGrounds is suffering from its clucky UI and it is very powerful and capable otherwise and likely to be much easier to get started than a 3d VTT.
The other thing that is different to when 4e launched is that Youtube is full of videos telling how to get started in D&D with nothing more than Zoom/Discord and some dice roller apps.
They have to be aware of that.

I am interested in what they are doing but somewhat sceptical about the utility of it. I am also curious as to the hardware requirements of this.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Me and Hussar will I think, regardless of who ends up being right.

The thing is, the truth could so easily be either side. Yes, it's a complex software project, somewhere in between Wordle and Grand Theft Auto XIII. And certainly many organizations, many times, have failed to deliver software on time, or at all. But on the flip side, many organizations have delivered amazing software more quickly than expected.

We don't know how many resources have been committed to this project, or how good they are, or how long they've been working on it in secret.

Just basing my guess off of what tends to happen when non-software companies decide to start writing software...whether they build their own organization or outsource it, each of which carries different risks...I would predict they don't deliver everything they are saying in the time frame offered. But maybe they got lucky and hired just the right development firm, or hired just the right engineering manager. And maybe they got that part totally wrong and this project will crash and burn. Could go either way, but I'll stick with my prediction of "late, but they'll get there".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

unless this is easy for a DM to set up it is going nowhere

My presumption is that if this really is the longer-term goal, they'll be releasing adventures well-integrated into the VTT to make it much easier to DM than Roll 20 or the like. That'll probably cost some flexibility, of course.

I am also curious as to the hardware requirements of this.

Indeed. UE5 can theoretically give you a package that can run on anything from an slightly ageing Android phone to a cutting-edge gaming PC, but a lot of the stuff they seemed keen on in the trailer screamed "Gaming PC with a proper graphics card" to me (especially the ultra-high-res models and post-processing and so on).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Emphasis mine.
One quibble: that is not what WotC claims. it claims some number (50 or 60 million) HAVE played D&D. I don't know that I have heard them suggest how many active players there are (because how could they possibly know?).

They did actually make a claim re: active players, not that long ago - they said 30m IIRC, and it was noted because it was lower than the 50 million "have played" figure previously. I haven't been able to source it, but perhaps someone else can. I imagine it's guesswork anyway, as yeah, how could you know?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My presumption is that if this really is the longer-term goal, they'll be releasing adventures well-integrated into the VTT to make it much easier to DM than Roll 20 or the like. That'll probably cost some flexibility, of course.

Agreed

Indeed. UE5 can theoretically give you a package that can run on anything from an slightly ageing Android phone to a cutting-edge gaming PC, but a lot of the stuff they seemed keen on in the trailer screamed "Gaming PC with a proper graphics card" to me (especially the ultra-high-res models and post-processing and so on).

That I did not know. If I were them I would release a player side client for the console market. The images shows do not look easily manipulated on a tablet (except large ones at the high end) or a phone but it would look gorgeous on a large TV.