Wotc always makes hyperbolic claims and expects us to believe them instead of giving evidence to support said claims.
It's still not clear to me that WotC has made any claims, or what they are. Unless someone posted it and I missed it, we're still working off a report by GeekWire, and assuming that they got the wording right. Did WotC report no Boomers or older people, or was that Geekwire's interpretation? The exact wording is
"The player population for D&D is cross-generational, with the bulk of respondents (48%) identifying as millennials, vs. 19% from Generation X and 33% from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012)." -- that seems all sorts of imprecise language. For starters, respondents of what? Secondly, what is 'the player population of D&D?' Then, identifying as a generation instead of being from one -- if this is summary marketing data, than all the surveys I've taken should be included and I certainly don't remember being asked what generation I identified with. For that matter, I don't remember being asked what generation I was a member of, simply how old (in large categorical swaths) I was. This all sounds like pop-sci journalism about some actual scientific or marketing research, rather than the actual research itself (which, even in the summaries, tend to be more precise about basic questions like the population studied and what specific studies to which it is in reference, etc.
Considering I read the article and a few others with the same source. I think I'm okay. Though I do not know the actual number of respondents, we can probably multiply those Millennial and Gen Z numbers by 13.7/50. Now unless you have a PhD in Math or Physics or a CPA you can stop biting at my ankles. Thank you.
No. Please. Pretty please... Don't normalize that notion. If someone has a terminal degree in a field of study,
the skills they gained in the acquiring of that degree should be useful in helping them produce
well-reasoned, articulated, and evidenced answers the rest of us should find convincing. The degree itself* means nothing to the rest of us and we should not be deferring to people because of its existence. We've all grown up with people who got a PhD in XYZ but mistakenly think that makes them experts in WXY, or been around for the forum poster who is totally forrealz a human rights lawyer and thus their ethics position is superior or has 8 years of HEMA and 12 of <Martial art of choice> and you should really listen to them about how combat really works, etc. Meaningful arguments and verifiable references, that's the support we need to normalize as convincing.
*well beyond the fact that we can't verify its existence
While technically I'm a Boomer, since I was born in 1963 and the last year of Boomers was 1964, I'm really more Gen X in thought and how I was raised.
That's the thing about these generational categories, they aren't personal. They are indicators demarking trends at the demographic (year of birth) level. Variation within the category is part of the the conceptualization of the category, including feeling like you more resemble traits considered more prevalent in other categories.
Most women and non-binary D&D players I know, including me, had bad experiences at gaming stores and events. Don't get me wrong, the bad experiences I had didn't push me away from the hobby or the gaming stores, but it took some tries until I find what places are welcoming and what are inhospitable. But most people don't give it a second chance: if the first experience is bad you don't have a reason to think the second one will be better.
Rule of thumb: if you want to find where the other 40% are playing, look for the stores and events run by women.
We have similar experiences with the sobriety community -- many women and LGBTQI community have had bad experiences with going to meetings as part of the at-large community, and participate in sub-group meetings (leading to the potential impression in the larger sobriety community that they aren't present).
