Social media stats of big RPG brands

[Morrus]

I literally have no idea what this mean for the hobby, but it's interesting to see the social media takeup of some of the big RPG brands. Looking at Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, here are the stats. Feel free to add any more; I'll just do D&D and Pathfinder for now (just added a couple more). These are, of course, not sales figures, or anything else - it's just interesting to see what different companies do with social media. For example, WotC clearly went all out with Facebook (maybe sunk a bunch a bunch of money into it) but not Google+, whereas Evil Hat does better on G+ than it does elsewhere, and P.E.G. doens't seem to worry about social media at all.This doesn't factor in that a lot of designers/publishers have individual or personal accounts, too, which are often very popular.I've used official company accounts here, but folks like Monte Cook have many times more followers personally than his official company account does.

Facebook
Dungeons & Dragons - 610,449 likes
Pathfinder RPG - 15,738 likes
Evil Hat (Fate) - 3,000 likes
P.E.G. (Savage Worlds) - 2,982 likes
FFG (Star Wars and lots more) - 51,961 likes
Monte Cook Games - 7,267 likes

Twitter (harder to compare as WotC has a bunch of different official accounts)
Main D&D account - 39.3K followers
Main Paizo account - 18.4k followers
Evil Hat (Fate) - 3,935 followers
P.E.G. (Savage Worlds) - 458 followers
FFG (Star Wars and lots more) - 33.3K followers
Monte Cook Games - 2,406 followers

Google+
Dungeons & Dragons - 6,100 followers
Pathfinder RPG - 1,545 followers (not sure that's official - hasn't been updated since 2011 so it might not be)
Evil Hat (Fate) - 1,199 followers
P.E.G. (Savage Worlds) - 606 followers
FFG (Star Wars and lots more) - 1,241 followers
Monte Cook Games -112 followers

So, for D&D Facebook is waaaaay ahead as their social media strategy; Twitter is lagging a long, long was behind that, and they're barely using G+ at all.

For Pathfinder, Facebook and Twitter are comparable in usage and popularity; G+ I'm not sure about, but if that account isn't official they may not be using it.

 

[GMMichael]

The most concrete meaning I can put on these numbers:

This is a measurement of interest, amongst people who partially define themselves as online accounts. I doubt that it's a statement of sales or potential sales, because what really speaks to CEOs is the old saying, "put your money where your mouth is." Or your Like.

The social media stats could probably be considered on the same level as advertising: are people SEEING your product, or not? D&D is being seen. Monte Cook (despite the awesome gameplay video), not so much.

Required marketing disclosure here (rated Mature).

That said...I'm off to start my social media accounts...

 

[Morrus]

My guess, from those figures, is that WotC's PR agency sank $50K or so into Facebook ads. Maybe less, as D&D does have some brand engines. They didn't invest in Twitter or G+.

Totally a guess, though. It's just that their FB presence is an order of magnitude larger than the Twitter presence; it suggests investment in one and not the other.

 

[trancejeremy]

There was a thread with Google+ stats on RPG.net with stats for OSR games

AD&D 1st Ed-1,295

AD&D 2nd Ed-562

Adventurer Conqueror King-579

Adventures Dark & Deep-287

Ambition & Avaric-131

Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea-290

Basic/Expert D&D is a private community

Basic Fantasy RPG-112

Castles & Crusades Society-533

DCCRPG-1,273

Delving Deeper RPG-126

Dungeon Crawl Classics- 170

Labyrinth Lord-694

Lamentations of the Flame Princess-829

OSR-2,764

Swords & Wizardry-1,161

Which also amuses me, because for the life of me, I can't figure out how to use Google+, yet the OSR community seems to have embraced it.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Have you got any stats on the World of Darkness games? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also very high too.

The ‘Big Three’ for fantasy, sci-fi and modern/horror are still D&D, Star Wars and World of Darkness (Vampire, mainly), respectively and in my opinion (obviously).

 

[Morrus]

Have you got any stats on the World of Darkness games? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also very high too.

The ‘Big Three’ for fantasy, sci-fi and modern/horror are still D&D, Star Wars and World of Darkness (Vampire, mainly), respectively and in my opinion (obviously).

They're easy enough to look up.

But the above figures (WotC's Facebook count aside, which doesn't fit with the rest) isn't so much an indicator of how well a game is doing as how well companies have invested in social media.

 

[TrippyHippy]

That’s all good. It’s just that since White Wolf changed it’s business model - by selling to third parties that operate largely through Kickstarter and through online web support - away from direct sales through retail game stores, it’s been hard to ascertain the level of the current WoD fan base. I suspect it’s actually pretty large still - I’d hazard only second to D&D.

 

[Morrus]

That’s all good. It’s just that since White Wolf changed it’s business model - by selling to third parties that operate largely through Kickstarter and through online web support - away from direct sales through retail game stores, it’s been hard to ascertain the level of the current WoD fan base. I suspect it’s actually pretty large still - I’d hazard only second to D&D.

Onyx Path's social media following is:

Facebook: 4,516 likes
Twitter: 2,692 followers
Google+: 989 followers

 

[Morrus]

There was a thread with Google+ stats on RPG.net with stats for OSR games

I only used official (company) accounts, mainly because there's a LOT of fan-created groups/pages/communities/accounts, with some games having multiples and multiples. The number of earlier-edition D&D pages or groups in various names/guises on various networks is insane.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Onyx Path's social media following is:

Facebook: 4,516 likes
Twitter: 2,692 followers
Google+: 989 followers

Ah, yes, but Vampire: The Masquerade has about 70,000+ likes on Facebook. The fans may be less aware of Onyx Path than the original brand names. Again, this all makes working out how big their fan base is quite difficult.