D&D General Weird "DnD Is Dead" Youtube Trend??

[cranberry]

Yea, just clickbait. I guess some Youtubers are getting desperate for views.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, also...at a certain point, there may be diminishing returns for "DM advise" content.

Especially now that the new DMG is actually readable!

 

[Parmandur]

Luke Gygax to Dan Ayoub: There's what 50 million players now?
Dan: Many more than that.

If your DM Advice content can't be relevant to a game that is growing by the millions still that's a creator problem, not a D&D problem

Sure, the game is growing...but good DM advise videos from 2022 will work fine still, how much demand is there for a churn of new content...? I can see that being more challenging now than it was 7 years ago.

 

[Nightfly]

"Most leading gamers claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys. But this didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme for his best selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For 5e."

 

[Umbran]

If your DM Advice content can't be relevant to a game that is growing by the millions still that's a creator problem, not a D&D problem

I don't know that it is either problem.

As D&D rode a skyrocket through the pandemic, it was picking up new players, and they were forming new groups of newbies, many of them playing online, none of them knowing quite what they were doing. Online content is a perfect approach to getting them ideas of what to do with their game.

But then, the world opened up. I suspect, even as the game continued to grow, you had more mixing of new and experienced players. That may have shifted us back into the apprenticeship model that has been common in the game for most of its history, and away from needing new online content to do the job.

Plus, just like with D&D game books, the market can be saturated with videos about D&D. If the video market has enough material to work with, they don't go for new videos with the same gusto.

 

[billd91]

D&D YouTube has been struggling lately. A lot of creators blame it on changes to the algorithms, but personally I suspect that between the OGLpocalypse and the fracturing of the 5e fanbase in it’s aftermath, there’s just less demand for D&D YouTube content than there was between 2020 and 2024.

It's not just D&D YouTubers complaining about the platform's algorithm changes. I'm inclined to think that there's something to the algorithm complaint and that's why the clickbaitiness has increased even for channels with generally decent, level-headed information.

 

[Kurotowa]

D&D YouTube has been struggling lately. A lot of creators blame it on changes to the algorithms, but personally I suspect that between the OGLpocalypse and the fracturing of the 5e fanbase in it’s aftermath, there’s just less demand for D&D YouTube content than there was between 2020 and 2024.

I wouldn't even put it down to the fanbase fracturing due to this or that event. I haven't seen much evidence of that outside of very specific online communities. My theory is that 2020 boom was another side effect of the pandemic lockdown. You know, that massive society upending event that no one likes to remember or talk about.

During the lockdown era, having your D&D group meet over Zoom or Discord with a VTT saw a big uptick in popularity. It was an activity and a social outlet that could be done remotely, and those were in high demand. And that, of course, drove the D&D content creators to new heights. But after the lockdown ended, things died down again. Not with a sudden stop, but a slow trail off over a period of years.

For content creators tracking D&D's popularity by the metrics of their own content, of course that looks like the game is dying. But the game is doing just fine. It's the artificial high of online virtual play and content catering to that playstyle that's going away.