WotC Market Research: Four Million D&D Players in 2004

[Tav_Behemoth]

I thought this post by Charles Ryan, the brand manager of D&D at Wizards of the Coast, might be of interest to folks here: specifically the estimate that the number of regular D&D players has grown from 2 million in 1999 to 4 million in 2004, and that this represents 2/3 of the total roleplaying business.

[Luke]

I wonder what he means when he says, "two thirds of the market". Are there really only 12 million roleplayers in the US? (Or is that a world-wide stat, making it even smaller!)

Or is he talking about 2/3s of total game store rpg sales? Such a figure wouldn't take into account what many folks here do (which is, albeit, a very small market.)

Or is he saying that 2/3s of all people polled said they play DnD?

Tav, any more informative links on this?
-L

[Tav_Behemoth]

My impression is that it is North America only, but I'm not sure.

The most detailed information about their market research applies to the 1999 survey.

And I think that there's two separate stats: market performance (based on CCG data perhaps, like Ken Hite's annual state of the industry) and actual gaming. The 4 million is an estimate of actual regular D&D players, which includes lots of basement gamers who don't buy new stuff and thus don't count into the market.

[jdagna]

The 2-4 million number measures regular players only - defined as those who play at least once a month (at least in the 1999 survey).  I'm assuming the definition has stayed the same for the more recent numbers.  This means that there's at least two other market segments that aren't getting measured: "casual" players who play a few times a year and "lapsed" players who haven't played for a while (but who seem to frequently come back).  One survey I saw estimated that 10-15 million in the US had played RPGs before, but I can't remember where that was (or when - if numbers have doubled in five years, that could be a lot of people).

[Vaxalon]

I wonder what he means when he says, "two thirds of the market". Are there really only 12 million roleplayers in the US?

If four million is 2/3 of the total, then the total is SIX million, not twelve million.

4 = 2/3 * T

4 * 3/2 = 2/3 * 3/2 * T

12/2 = 6/6 * T

6 = T

[Tav_Behemoth]

Charles Ryan has confirmed that the estimate of 4 million regular players is in the U.S. only. If we accept the assumptions that D&D represents 2/3 of the market, and that the international roleplaying population is half of what it is in the U.S...

...well, maybe Vaxalon will be good enough to do the math!

[Jack Aidley]

Why are we assuming that D&D players form a distinct group from other roleplayers? Going from anecdotal evidence, and the Forge's profiling threads, I would say nearly every single roleplayer plays, or has played, D&D.

[Vaxalon]

He's not counting the "has played" Jack.

His figure is only of gaming groups that meet regularly.

As for the worldwide gamer figure, if there are half again as many gamers in the rest of the world as there are in the US, then the worldwide total is 9 million.

[rpghost]

Well here is what confuses me about all this... [I'll offer you up some HARD numbers to make my point.]

We did nearly 1.5 million in sales this year from our brick & mortar store, our online store, our ebook store, and our online indie store. Of all that revenue is a part this "industry", as such Wizards of the Coast accounted for about 16.1% of my overall sales (revenue) volume. 30.1% of the brick and mortar sales (it's the only place we sell MTG/CCGs). 16.7% of my online store, 12.2% of ebook sales, and 0% of indie sales (obviously).

So how is it that WOTC claims to be 2/3rds of the this industry? Esp since much of our promotion and customer base is from D&D/D20/OGL friendly locations?

James Mathe
Minion Development Corp.

[GaryTP]

Well here is what confuses me about all this... [I'll offer you up some HARD numbers to make my point.]

We did nearly 1.5 million in sales this year from our brick & mortar store, our online store, our ebook store, and our online indie store. Of all that revenue is a part this "industry", as such Wizards of the Coast accounted for about 16.1% of my overall sales (revenue) volume. 30.1% of the brick and mortar sales (it's the only place we sell MTG/CCGs). 16.7% of my online store, 12.2% of ebook sales, and 0% of indie sales (obviously).

So how is it that WOTC claims to be 2/3rds of the this industry? Esp since much of our promotion and customer base is from D&D/D20/OGL friendly locations?

James Mathe
Minion Development Corp.

Nice numbers, congrats.

Would need to know several things first before this question could be answered. (And I don't expect and answer, just thinking out loud.) What number of unique visitors do you get through your stores? Which are repeat customers? Which customers bought DnD products AND something not from WoTC? Which customers bought non-dnd product from you but buy dnd product elsewhere. And if marketing standards hold true - that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products, and how are these products spread out over your customer base?

If your total customer base was 30k for example, 1.5M in sales equates to $50.00 spent per customer. How do your heavy purchasers skew these numbers, etc. I'm sure you've done this, but all the revenue information would have to be broken down by channel, format, brand, customer habits, etc. Then you'd have to compare it to WotC numbers. Too much unknown information (both in the WoTC data and what you posted to actually know the lay of the land.)

You have a unique business model and are not the standard in retail/etail model. I'm not sure how this effects the numbers also as where you draw your customer base from may affect the percentages also.

Once again, congrats on the numbers!

Gary

[rpghost]

About half our online sales during any month are from NEW customers when it comes to print books. Probably aboput 75% of the sales of ebooks are from repeat customers.  I don't have the numbers in front of me right now... but we do sell about 40-50 of any new D&D book that comes out and about 20-30 cases of any TMG from WTC.

On the GIN someone mentioned a very good point though, which I think explains these numbers... that is that WOTC happens to have penitrated the mass market. Barns and Nobles and even Amazon account for a lot of sales that would not show up in the standard game store channels.

Have a great Xmas!
James

[Tav_Behemoth]

Congrats for the strong sales - hope 2005 is even better for you!

I wish that your experience was representative of the industry as a whole - that'd be great news for independent publishers. Unfortunately, you're probably not representative of hobby retailers -- I'm betting you do a substantially above-average job of educating customers and staff, promoting quality games and downplaying ones that are  lemons, and otherwise creating a more-level playing field.

As you say, though, the biggest source of skew is that hobby retailers are not the mass market. One of the things that came up in the Gen Con So Cal panel was that Pokemon Jr. was likely to be the best-selling RPG of all time, based almost entirely on its sales through Wal-Mart and other deep discounters.  (It apparently was not considered a success, nevertheless).

(Wal-Mart is a good candidate for the dark matter in any map of the universe - look how the Top 10 music lists changed once Sound Scan started recording sales from Wal Mart, truck stops, etc...)

[daMoose_Neo]

Pokemon Jr. was likely to be the best-selling RPG of all time, based almost entirely on its sales through Wal-Mart and other deep discounters.  (It apparently was not considered a success, nevertheless).

Can probably imagine why~
I'd be willing to bet that 9 out of 10 of those copies sold were sold to parents, grandparents, or other adults who had dealings with a kid obsessed with the Pokemon CCG.
Parents, as a whole, are fairly ignorant on the hobby market. My parents still think D&D is all about devil worship :P The Pokemon fad was horrid on parents however because of the deluge of merchendice. So, you're shopping in the store, see a "Pokemon!" product, about the size of a deck of Uno, look at the back and see some cards and think "Okay, Jimmy likes the Pokewhatsit card game, I'll pick these up for him". Only to get home and hear "But MOOOOM, these aren't the right cards!!!"
They were sold, but from all appearances the game wasn't played. Sounds like it was a solid game for kids though, which is kind of disappointing, would mean more folks getting into RPG games like they are with the CCG games right now.
So, it was a disappointment and a let down because it while it had the numbers to make TSR weep, it didn't have an active player base. Sales are nice, players are better ^_^

And as an aside, I don't know what WalMart's figures are for the D&D and other books, but any store I've been to thats supposed to have them doesn't. My store is supposed to have all sorts of D&D stuff, as well as Farscape and some other RPG systems, but notta (and I should know, I work there!)

[tymotzues]

Thanks to all of you who posted up the facts and figures (et. links)
don't know where else I would have found that info.
God I love the Forge
:)