Peak of D&D: the 1980s?

[CharlesRyan]

I have been under the impression for quite some time that, at least in terms of popularity, D&D enjoyed its peak during the 1980s.

This seemed to be confirmed in the recent CNN piece on D&D:

"The game peaked in the 1980s, but there are plenty of fans left. Some 4 million people play D&D regularly."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/10/16/dungeons.dragons.ap/index.html

Yet people on these boards have often disputed this claim, arguing that it is more popular now.

This quote from the recent National Review piece on D&D (http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200410151029.asp) suggests that this might be the case: "More people play Dungeons & Dragons now than ever before," says Charles Ryan, D&D's brand manager. "Every year, we sell more copies of the Player's Handbook than we did during the 1980s."

Hi, all, sorry I didn't jump into this a little sooner, but I've been away for a few days.

I'll start with an unequivocal statement, then give you some info to back it up: More people play D&D on a regular basis now than ever before. You can quote me on that (as John Miller did in that National Review piece).

How do we know that? Well, the truth is, TSR didn't leave us a lot of market research data--we don't know how many people played D&D in the 80s (and, frankly, TSR probably didn't either, although they made some claims).

But we do have good sales data for the entire history of D&D, and we know that we sell more core books now than ever.

There's some wiggle room in the analysis, of course--no analysis is perfect, when you're comparing different types of data from different sources. But with a very close look at the information available, we're very confident that D&D is currently enjoying its biggest audience to date--and that the audience continues to grow!

 

[Henry]

Thanks for weighing in, Charles.

By "Regular Basis", I'm assuming you mean more committed game groups that meet at regular intervals, than play in "spurts" as was more common in the 1980's. I can say that the experience of local player groups I know was that everybody played more frequently back then (two to five times a week!) but in "spurts" lasting for several months, then dying to some other activity. Now, the audience is older, buying more, but more importantly they are committed to a regular game session.

It's still a bit of a stretch to me that one can say "people are playing more regularly" because the sale figures are over the previous ones. But you're the guy with the hard numbers...

 

[jmucchiello]

The articles and statemements on which my impression is based -- and the CNN/APA article as well -- refer to the entire history of FRPGs, not just up to 1999.

Fact checking in articles is hit and miss. The "Fact" that D&D had a peak in 1980 according to Charles is only true up until recent history. However, the statement that D&D peaked in 1980 was true and you have no way of knowing if the CNN/APA reporter checked that fact with data from today or just found corraborating evidence from 5 years ago that agreed with the "fact".

IOW, just because it was said, doesn't mean it was so.

I don't know about you but in my experience when I read newspaper articles (or god forbid listen to sound bites on tv news) involving an area of my expertise, 90% of the time there is a "fact" that totally untrue in the reporting. It is obvious that someone is misquoting or making a half-assed summary of something they really don't understand and they write or say something that I know cannot be true. This has happened so many times that I assume when someone in the news is trying to tell me a news story, they have bunged it up somehow. I'm not an expert in a lot of things but if the number of mistakes they make in my fields is so high, it is probably equally high in the fields I am not expert in. Call me cynical if you wish, but I see no reason to believe it only my areas of expertise in which mistakes are made so frequently.

 

[Arnwyn]

Still, I am curious. Is there any hard data here?

No. Sales figures are not made public. Your best source of info is to listen to the ("spin" of the) Brand Manager.

I find it strange that people still try to ask about "hard data".

 

[RyanD]

No numbers are provided by Ryan -- and as a "brand manager" I would expect more than a little spin here.

Here's the text of a message I wrote in an industry insider forum that sums up what I know about the relative sizes of the gaming industry over time:

You could divide the history of hobby game retailing in North America into 4.1 phases.

The ".1" is the part when Avalon Hill boxed wargames and similar products were sold in diverse outlets (book stores, toy stores, "hobby" stores [places where you might by RC models, knitting supplies, macrame, etc.], etc.), miniatures games were dominant in terms of dollar sales, and RPGs were proliferating via mimeograph machines and illicit photocopies. Call this period 1975 and before.

Phase .1: Total size of the hobby gaming market was less than $10 million/year. (RPG sales accounted for about 1/3 of this total by the end of the period.)

From the mid '70s to the mid '80s, most hobby gaming products were sold through book stores, toy stores, and "specialty" stores catering to the target demographic, like Spencer's. Starting in the early '80s, the toy store channel was consolidated by Toys R Us and its siblings, and the "toy store" as a small, independent retail outlet mostly ceased to exist. Some RPG sales migrated to Toys R Us, but the experiment was not successful over the long run. These were the years when RPGs had the highest unit sales volumes in their history (+1 million units of the Basic D&D boxed set sold per year in the early 80s, for example).

Phase I: Total size of the hobby gaming market was less than $30 million/year. (RPGs accounted for about 2/3 of this total [$20 million] on average throughout the period, rising near the end to a height of perhaps $40 million.)

In the mid '80s to the start of the '90s, specialty retailing for comic books and for hobby games took off. Consolidation in the book channel converted about half the existing book stores to empty store fronts, and forced the remaining independents into niche marketing. This period was marked by the rise of a large number of RPG publishers who competed effectively vs. TSR for marketshare. Even as unit volumes declined, unit prices increased (as did production values). During this time TSR also branched out successfully into novel publishing, essentially doubling its sales.

Phase II: Total size of the hobby gaming market was less than $50 million/year. (RPGs accounted for about 3/4 of this total [$37.5 million] throughout this period, rising to perhaps $50 million total by the end of the period.)

In 1993 Magic released, and in 1995, more than 100 CCGs were marketed to the hobby gaming channel. At the same time, Games Workshop's annual compound growth rate took it past $50 million ($10 million in North America). Sales of hobby gaming products had consolidated primarily into hobby gaming speciality stores, book stores and some comic book stores. As TSR stumbled from '94 to '96, the growth in CCGs and GW more than made up for the negative trend in RPGs. This period saw fairly continuous growth through 1999.

Phase III: Total size of the hobby gaming market was less than $100 million/year in '95 and about $250 million/year by '99. (RPGs accounted for about 10-20% of this total, between $25 and $35 million annually throughout this period.)

In 2000 Pokemon was successfully launched in the US, followed in 2002 by Yu-Gi-Oh. GW continued to grow at its normal annual compound rate, taking it above $100 million ($30 million in North America). The hobby gaming market diversified with an increase in collectible games of many kinds, and high-end board games. Increasingly large amounts of money were spent to bring a mainstream audience to hobby gaming products - but only by a handful of large companies. Smaller companies saw a general downsizing over time and were squeezed by challenges in the distribution and speciality retailer segments of the channel.

Phase IV (now): Total size of the "hobby gaming" market which now includes mass market products fluctuates between $500 million and $1 billion annually, depending on the sales cycle of the mass market products. (RPGs account for about $25 million of this total annually, with occasional "spikes" of up to $30-$35 million.)

 

[T. Foster]

Here's the text of a message I wrote in an industry insider forum that sums up what I know about the relative sizes of the gaming industry over time:

<big snip>

Thanks for posting this. Those are some very interesting numbers. It seems hardly worth pointing out that if, as your numbers indicate, rpgs today are generating approximately the same $ amount of sales per year as they were in the early 80s ($20-25 million), despite greatly increased average price per book and average books per player, that the total number of players must necessarily be significantly smaller now than it was then (perhaps by as much as a factor of ten -- if the average rpg book costs 2.5x as much now as it did in the early 80s ($5-15 vs. $12-40), and the average player buys 4x as many books per year now as he did in the 80s).

 

[Silver Moon]

Speaking as an old timer who was around and played back then: D&D wasn't just a "fad" in the early 1980's it was a major fad. A significant number of high school and college aged students all "sampled" the game. Furthermore, most games that were played were ad hoc pick up games rather than campaigns, where frequently only the DM had copies of the books. I knew several gaming groups at the time who had a dozen active players on average, where today's groups are half that size. In sheer numbers of people exposed to the game the 1981-1982 period probably surpassed any other two-year time frame for the game.

Now, If you're talking sales, serious players, campaigns, computer gaming, computer communication, etc, then the game is more popular now - but it is more of a niche market. Back in that short historic period it was very much in the mainstream.

 

[diaglo]

Speaking as an old timer who was around and played back then: D&D wasn't just a "fad" in the early 1980's it was a major fad. A significant number of high school and college aged students all "sampled" the game. Furthermore, most games that were played were ad hoc pick up games rather than campaigns, where frequently only the DM had copies of the books. I knew several gaming groups at the time who had a dozen active players on average, where today's groups are half that size. In sheer numbers of people exposed to the game the 1981-1982 period probably surpassed any other two-year time frame for the game.

Now, If you're talking sales, serious players, campaigns, computer gaming, computer communication, etc, then the game is more popular now - but it is more of a niche market. Back in that short historic period it was very much in the mainstream.

i agree with Silver Moon somewhat here.

as the referee i was the only one in our group to own all the books. i had 14 players in my active group. and i knew of several more groups in the area where the referee/DM was the only one to own the books.

modules in particular were for the DM's eyes only.

in today's groups (again this is only from personal experience) every player has at least the PHB or a pdf or a copy of the core rules. heck i own several copies of each of them. but i don't use any of them in actual play

so sales figures to me don't mean diddly.

 

[Shadowdancer]

For us, it is just the reverse. In the '80s, we had several copies of the Player's Handbook, GM Guide, MM, etc., in our group because we had several people who would take turns as DM.

Now, we only have two people in our group who DM, and they are the only two with copies of the three core books.

 

[Dark Jezter]

D&D was cool in the 80's thats when it peaked we D&D players are all "nerds" and "Cultists" now. Also we're unfortuneatly still satanic too.

I don't think that many people still view D&D players as being satanic, instead they view it as being a hobby for socially-inept losers. Nowadays when they think of gamers, they picture an overweight, 30-year-old virgin who works at a comic book store and still lives with his parents rather than a black-clad cultist.

Not that all people view gamers as being that way, but that certainly seems to be the image that a lot of non-gamers have of D&D players.