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<blockquote data-quote="WinningerR" data-source="post: 9576898" data-attributes="member: 5247">No insult intended--he's a good guy and I'm happy he enjoys the game--but Joe Manganiello didn't make D&amp;D &quot;cool.&quot; D&amp;D made Joe Manganiello cool. At least, in the sense that it generated a lot more attention for him than he generated for it.&quot;Cool,&quot; of course, is an amorphous concept. As most of us think of it, &quot;coolness&quot; stands in opposition to popularity. A movie would never attempt to establish that characters are &quot;cool&quot; by dressing them in Taylor Swift merch.What we're really debating, I think, is whether interest in D&amp;D is waning. That's obviously a complicated question, but the first place I'd start looking for answers is a simple Google Trends Search. Trends plots the number of searches for a given topic as a function of time. It's not perfect, but it's a decent proxy for public interest. (Trends data, later backed up by various proprietary sources, is what led me to confidently conclude that STRANGER THINGS was not a significant factor in D&amp;D's 5E-era growth.)A Google Trends search for Dungeons &amp; Dragons is a bit of a mixed bag. The good news is that we see interest steadily and sharply increasing from the dawn of 5E until today. There is certainly no visible drop off, which is powerful evidence that cuts against the theory that people are &quot;moving on&quot; en masse from D&amp;D. (Look at a search for, say, Paizo from 2014 to 2017 to see what a genuine decrease in attention looks like.)On the other hand, if we zoom into just the last few years, we see that interest is quite stable, but relatively flat. On the one hand, that stability is impressive; most pop culture phenomena zig-zag wildly between lengthy periods of waxing and waning interest. But on the other hand, the 2024 PHB seems to have lifted interest by only a few percentage points.Collectively, this data suggests that demand for D&amp;D remains stronger than ever, but growth has slowed or stopped. I see other signs that support this conclusion.It's important to note that &quot;interest&quot; or &quot;demand&quot; doesn't tell us everything we need to know to gauge the health of D&amp;D as a business. Strong demand is a great sign, but you still have to capitalize on that demand to build a great business. It's also possible to grow a business in the face of flat demand by increasing efficiency and revenue-per-user. (WotC seems largely focused on doing just that, these days.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="WinningerR, post: 9576898, member: 5247"] No insult intended--he's a good guy and I'm happy he enjoys the game--but Joe Manganiello didn't make D&D "cool." D&D made Joe Manganiello cool. At least, in the sense that it generated a lot more attention for him than he generated for it. "Cool," of course, is an amorphous concept. As most of us think of it, "coolness" stands in opposition to popularity. A movie would never attempt to establish that characters are "cool" by dressing them in Taylor Swift merch. What we're really debating, I think, is whether interest in D&D is waning. That's obviously a complicated question, but the first place I'd start looking for answers is a simple Google Trends Search. Trends plots the number of searches for a given topic as a function of time. It's not perfect, but it's a decent proxy for public interest. (Trends data, later backed up by various proprietary sources, is what led me to confidently conclude that STRANGER THINGS was not a significant factor in D&D's 5E-era growth.) A Google Trends search for Dungeons & Dragons is a bit of a mixed bag. The good news is that we see interest steadily and sharply increasing from the dawn of 5E until today. There is certainly no visible drop off, which is powerful evidence that cuts against the theory that people are "moving on" en masse from D&D. (Look at a search for, say, Paizo from 2014 to 2017 to see what a genuine decrease in attention looks like.) On the other hand, if we zoom into just the last few years, we see that interest is quite stable, but relatively flat. On the one hand, that stability is impressive; most pop culture phenomena zig-zag wildly between lengthy periods of waxing and waning interest. But on the other hand, the 2024 PHB seems to have lifted interest by only a few percentage points. Collectively, this data suggests that demand for D&D remains stronger than ever, but growth has slowed or stopped. I see other signs that support this conclusion. It's important to note that "interest" or "demand" doesn't tell us everything we need to know to gauge the health of D&D as a [I]business.[/I] Strong demand is a great sign, but you still have to capitalize on that demand to build a great business. It's also possible to [I]grow [/I]a business in the face of flat demand by increasing efficiency and revenue-per-user. (WotC seems largely focused on doing just that, these days.) [/QUOTE]

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