Who is the elusive "New Pen-and-paper Gamer" the RPG companies are trying to nab?

[Umbran]

I like the thought process you're on, but to a real marketer, it's not nearly specific enough.

But, given the budgets involved, is being specific useful for your client? WotC, the biggest fish in the pond, could not hope to wage separate marketing campaign for each media market. If your scheme is not widely applicable, it wouldn't be implementable.

 

[Intense_Interest]

The population of possible D&D players are the Lesser-Social & Non-Competitive Youth and the Unemployed, with a chance that most of the respondents on ENWorld that "returned" to PnP RPGs being the Comfortably Affluent Gen X types who may have returned to D&D when they had the time to invest into it.

The only way to establish a foothold of D&D, or PnP RPGs in general, in any market of potential gamers would be to advertise it to the prison population.

PnP role-playing games are among the most popular games for the intellectual prison population because the time invested into D&D or D&D-likes are well worth the time investment of a person who has twelve or fourteen hours in a day to spend and not much else to do.

Because the modern world has far more time constraints for both younger and older people that in the past we could consider prime gamer material. Instead of spending afternoons playing or preparing games, the High-Schoolers who would have played are working towards highly-competitive colleges or are socializing with their peers. The Working Class and College-Students have so many more aspects of life to deal with than people did twenty to thirty years ago, and therefore do not have the solid blocks of time necessary to make a D&D campaign a worthwhile investment.

The modern entertainment of today was built to be digestible at any time and for any amount of time: Hulu for television, download-able Podcast-radio, easy-access internet websites to read & write, and the persistent-world video games to play at any time of the day. D&D wasn't designed for this world and isn't suited to compete in it. Decrying a generation of "potential" players deciding not to invest into the 30-year history of D&D is ignoring the world that exists now.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Nothing has fundamentally changed, wrt this question.

So, my answer would (still!) be: bookish types. So, geeks. Or, a kinda subset of "geek", if one insists.

Yeah. As it ever was.

Actually, hey, there might be other types "they" are trying to "nab". Sure. Ha! "Doomed to failure" is putting it mildly, methinks.

 

[MortonStromgal]

How old are they?

How do RPG companies expect to reach them? Media? Which ones? Word-of-mouth?

How much demographic crossover is there really between the World's Most Popular Online MMO Game and the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game?

How do the game companies expect to retain said clients once they've "attracted" them in the first place?

How "mainstream" does said demographic really sit?

Age = less than 25
I think the industry is trying to figure that out. You still have Warhammer Fantasy Battles but now you have Facebook and World of Warcraft to.
I would guess 40% have played D&D at one time (this is only a guess). Some of that is new blood.
They will retain them by putting out interesting product
I would say its becoming more and less mainstream at the same time. Geek culture is far more mainstream than ever but RPGs tend to still hang out in aloof circles of elitists ever since VtM lost popularity.

[edit] I don't think Video Game players are a bad audience to target but you need to target them with stuff they know. Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc not World of Warcraft to D&D. Also you need to target people who like stories, single player RPGs offer stories, MMOs tend not to (some do). Its a much better to target book readers and TV watchers IMHO as they may want more interaction. Enjoy Burn Notice? Now play the game!

 

[Plane Sailing]

FWIW, back in the 70's most people I know that were introduced to D&D came via one of a few routes

a) it was played in the local wargames club (picking up wargamers)
b) it was advertised in Marvel comics (read mostly by teens at the time in the UK)
c) it was advertised in wargames magazines and things like "Games and Puzzles" magazine (which is where I saw it).

I've got no idea whether any of those would be appropriate today though!

 

[utopia27]

folks with allergies to marketing

let's start with a target demographic - 16-20 yr-old male, middle-to-upper income household.

Broad demo - how to refine it? look for gateway activities. Academic engagement - model UN participants, honor society, AV club, Chess club, Quiz Bowl, Robotics club, Anime club? Engagement with literature - book stores, coffee shops, fan clubs, amazon reading list?

I think investment in one or more types of fantastic settings is a key indicator. Comic fans and PnP RPGers have huge overlap because of the investment in the setting. Pern-ites are an exception - and maybe there's an important difference there that I can't figure out. Lots of fan-fic, but no good RPG system, and I've never known a long-running Pern campaign. Tolkien-esque fantasy, Star Wars, Star Trek, Conan, Bladerunner (aka Shadowrun) all have dragged segments of population into RPGs. Vampire/Goth is... it's own thing... but it's definitely got its own voice. A strong desire to engage a setting (or several) is key to RPG'ing, and to identify potential recruits.

Problem solving is also a strong indicator, along with creativity. Part of the reason for the overlap between IT and RPG is exactly this problem-solving aspect. Science fairs, Maker Fairs, Lego Fairs, robotics clubs... just about anyone building something - preferably something fantastic (rather than, say, small engine repair...) is probably a candidate.

How to hook them? This is actually tough - the question of how you cut through all of the more easily accessible alternatives. Honestly, any attempt to read something like EnWorld to get an idea of what RPG playing is like is hopeless (and off-putting). There are no bold visuals (who can compete with skiing and surfing?). There's little performance aspect (ever hung out at someone else's game?). So something like D&D Experience, or gaming conventions, or intro-games at book stores, or something... with an engaging presenter (preferably articulate, young, and curvalicious) is probably the best hook. Second best would be some good form of eperience reports/short-story-based-on-gaming-session or some other first-person account of a gaming experience. I think it might be presentable as a 30-second television-style ad.

I really don't think that standard copy advertising, or click-ads, or anything else that doesn't convey the experience.

How to Retain? People fall out of RPG'ing for two main reasons - their group broke up (or they left it..), or they ran out of time. Out of time is, and will continue to be, an increasing issue. RPGs are definitely a time-consuming hobby. So I think that these two issues are tightly coupled - someone's fallen out because they ran out of time, and someone dropped out because they left their gaming group, and they haven't hunted down a new gaming group. So make it easy for folks to reconnect. A mixer. A promotions party. A new-release event.

On reflection, I have _never_. _ever_. received a mailing, promotion, or invitation from either a FLGS or an RPG publisher. Not one. I've been in this hobby for over 25 years. I _always_ connect with my FLGS, wherever I live. I've playtested for several gaming systems and several publishers. I was an Outrider for Games Workshop (presenter/ambassador). I've had subscriptions to several RPG magazines over the years (I believe they've all folded now...). I attend (and sometimes organize) conventions. I'm not hard to find. I'm not shy. But no commercial RPG entity has ever reached out to me as a customer, and attempted to reconnect me back into the hobby (and I have needed it a couple times).

As a final note - I've seen folks talking about producing continuing streams of good products as a retention tool. Crap. In fact, a stream of good products probably means that good old products are OBE and/or out of print. Meaning that the longer you're out of the hobby, the harder and more expensive it is to re-engage. Longevity of product and investment (intellectual and product) is a retention tool. Churn is not.