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| That is Seatle Seahawks running back / WotC intern C.J. Prosise on the left |
The Seattle Times ran a D&D focused article today.
Some takeaways / numbers / figures given by WotC:
- 44% growth for the D&D brand in 2016
- 12 to 15 million D&D players in North America (note - NOT USA alone)
- 40% of D&D players are female
- 50 percent of those who started playing D&D since 2014 watch games online
- they need an actual blacksmith IN STUDIO for the “The Stream of Many Eyes” Twitch D&D show / game that will originate from a Los Angeles soundstage June 1, 2 and 3.
- no actual sales figures
Damn. i could use one or two of them for the Monday D&D game. (But they'd have to play the old one... the REALLY old one. Rules Cyclopedia old...)
ReplyDeleteThis sounds completely correct. There are around 10 million active players that watch critical role, and mearls confirmed that it's the most successful edition, which means bigger then the fad from the early eighties and the resurgence after the d20 release.
ReplyDeleteI believe the latest comment from the D&D team is that there's well over 10 million regular (1+ times a month) players.
When I was first starting to play in 1991, it would have been great to have 40% of the players be female. Even the girlfriends didn't want to play. Of course, back then we kept our gaming to ourselves and very rarely advertised it.
ReplyDeleteMy son's group has more than half of his players being female.
Times sure our changing :)
From my experience, the White Wolf era was when a lot of women started getting interested in tabletop RPG's, then it spread out from there.
DeleteThat may be completely anecdotal though.
For some reason, making my all guy gaming group roll 40% of randomly created zero level DCC RPG funnel characters as female is not really the same... [any girls want to play? we have pizza and beer!]
ReplyDeleteYeah, 40% female is the stat I doubt the most. Maybe 40% of 5e players, or VTT players, or Adventurers League players, but that ratio would dwindle rapidly with the OSR and retro-clones, etc.
ReplyDeleteIf you're posting here, you're likely aware of the OSR.
DeleteAt the top of the scale, there might be 10,000 members of the OSR. This is consistent with populations of the OSR group on google plus, or the size of the 1e group on facebook.
100 times that many people are playing monthly. 10 million people. We are a drop in the ocean.
The article derives 40% from responses to one survey (I'm guessing through organized play). I'm hypothesizing that players of all the other editions and other frpgs that fall under the loose category of 'D&D' could be another, albeit less visible, set of several million; I need a bit more to make a conclusion.
DeleteI hope nobody infers I believe more female gamers is a bad thing! Certainly there are more now (headcount or percentage) than in the early days, and that's great.
I’m not sure it would change that much. The OSR community might not be 40% women, but I know when I play at home, it’s 50/50. So there’s a bit of a distinction.
ReplyDeleteMy first ed game is 50% women, my Metamorphosis Alpha game 40%, my wife’s DCC table 30-50% depending on the day. I’d say the 40% number is likely accurate industry wide.
ReplyDeleteC.J. Prosise can't stay healthy to run the ball on the field, so it looks like he has become a gaming intern. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI hope their numbers are accurate (I have no reason to disbelieve them) because that is good for the hobby overall.
ReplyDelete