The Dancey Ratio and the Strange Case of the Missing Gamers

[b_bankhead]

Ryan Dancey has repeatedly quoted the number based on WOTC marketing research that there are 1.6 million active players of D&D in America.  This is people actually sitting around tables and kicking in the doors on orcs mind you ,not just buyers, who he claims are a far smaller number.

America has a population of approxiamately 250 million so it is a simple matter to show that active D&D gamers make up 0.64% of the overall USA population.

I am a resident of Columbus, Ohio and I have been since 1977.  I have been involved in the gaming scene in this city off and on since that time.  I have seen all the game shops ,visited all the clubs and generally seen pretty much all what the Columbus gaming scene has to offer.

Columbus  also has a long history of being one of America's most widely used test market cities.  Because our demographics is so 'average' and because we are within 500 miles of the majority of the US population and because we are fairly large (15th largest metro in America). Many of the newest consumer products you see being nationally distributed had their first 'roll-out' in Columbus.

   We are also the home base of Origins.  But the population of Origins is drawn from all over the country so it isn't very siginifigant to the discussion of just the Columbus gaming population.

   Given all this I feel confident that Columbus is pretty representative of the overall USA in terms of it's makeup, because major corporations bet millions that it is .  Put simply if it's good enough for the Pepsi bottling company it's good enough for me and should be for you....

 The Columbus metro area has a population of 711,470 as per the last census.  The overall Franklin county area has a population of approxiamately 1.5 million.

Given this simple arithemetic shows that there should be over 4000 regular D&D players in the Columbus metro alone and over 9000 in the greater Franklin county area....

I have a problem with these numbers.  Namely they are completely and utterly impossible....In fact I would be astounded and astonished if the numbers were even a TENTH of this figure.

According to WOTC's vaunted market research the number of non-D&D gamers is about half to a third of this figure. So there should be well over 10,000 rpg gamers of all types in Franklin county.

Again I state this figure is grotesquely wrong.  There is no way it could be true.

I have been actually trying to put together an rpg community comparable to the one that broke up 10 years ago with practically no success. I have been trying for years, I have haunted the available public venues like a disconsolate ghost and I have come to the conclusion that the actual rpg player population of the entire area may be closer to 100 than 10,000.  You got that right, TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE SMALLER THAN THAT PREDICTED BY THE DANCEY RATIO.

Hey supposedly, Call of Cthulhu has about 1% of the RPG  market.  By that token there are about 100 COC gamers in the area. In five years I have encounter exactly 2 (not including myself), where are the 'rest'?

      There are those who will say that the problem is me.  But what could that problem be?  What could I possibly be doing wrong that I'm missing 90-99% of the gaming 'population' in a city I have lived in for a quarter century. Please remember that during that entire time I have either been a part of ,or watched from the sidelines of the rpg crowd. I don't believe I could be missing 9000+ gamers if I were Hellen Keller. In point of fact I can see more people in the computer games section of Media Play AT A GLANCE than I have seen of actual local rpg players in 5 years of looking.

Lets look at a smaller community within Columbus.  Columbus also has the Ohio State University which is the second largest in the USA with about 48,000 students, drawn from all over the country and from 100 different nations.

By the Dancey ratio we should expect over 300 rpg gamers of all kinds.
OSU has a gaming club as it has since 1977.  Going to a meeting of OSUMGA (OSU Minituature and Gaming Association) you would do well to see maybe a dozen rpg players.
And undergraduate aged youths mind you are supposed to be the core market for rpgs.
So where are all the missing OSU gamers, the Dancey ratio says I'm missing over 300 but damn if I can find them.

Given this I have been driven to a particular thesis.  In a recent post no less than Ryan Dancey himself argues that the number of actual players is much larger that buyers and the way to make the industry more profitable is to get them to buy.

Based on my observations I propose a radically different theory:

Put simply WOTC market research is severely flawed because it is based on mail in surveys ( I would hasted to reccomend the reader to Hoff's "How to Lie with Statistics' as its first chapter deals with the problems with mail in surveys...) and thus draws from a series of self selected groups.

My theory is that the community of rpg material purchasers is larger that that of people who actually play. As much as an order of magnitude, maybe more.  Furthermore a large percentage ,perhaps even the larger majority, of gaming material is purchased by people by people who not only will never actually use it, but COULD NOT POSSIBLY EVEN IF THEY GAMED 24 HOURS A DAY.

  You may possibly be wondering how I could come to this belief.  Because I have seen during my adult life numerous game hobby members with foot high stacks D&D manuals that they lug around but never open, people with shelf feet of games and supplements that they have never really used or played.(Including myself, on my recent move I gave about 3 shelf feet of rpg material away to the Salvtion Army, I still have about that much left..) One rpg.net poster admitted to purchasing some $10,000 of rpg material in a year, others who will admit to spending hundreds of dollars a month. Any child could prove using arithmetic that the overwhelming majority of this material is being unused.

In fact I think that the unsuccessful gamer is the backbone of the rpg market. If people only bought what they knew they would play, I think sales would be a tenth or less of what they are.

For anyone who questions this premise I suggest the following game.  How many gamers does the Dancey ratio predict (0.0064) are playing in your town? Does the figure seem reasonable or even possible to you?

[szilard]

I'm not really sure where your assumptions are coming from. I fully expect most people who play rpgs to play with a small group of friends. Most of these people probably buy their gaming materials at places other than gaming stores. Most of these people aren't likely to be involved in any "scene" other than hanging out around a friend's table once a week or so. Why should you expect to know them?

Oh. I live in a city of about 100,000. I know (or know of) dozens of gamers who live here. I am certain that the number I know of is only a small percentage of the total.

Stuart

[Jason Lee]

Well, at a population of about 126,000 I should have about 800 gamers.  If I really had to I could probably hunt down about 50 gamers, all within 7 years of my age.  I don't hang out in hobby stores anymore, nor purchase much from them.  I play at my house with a circle of friends.  By those figues, I might have met 1/16 of the alleged gaming population.  I would actually buy that ratio.

[Matt Gwinn]

Didn't you (or someone else) post this exact same thread about a year ago?

The Columbus metro area has a population of 711,470 as per the last census. The overall Franklin county area has a population of approxiamately 1.5 million.

OK, of that 1.5 million, how many have you met?  Of those you've met, how many have you had a conversation with?  Of those you have had conversations with, how many have you discussed gaming with?

My guess is that the gamers are there...you just haven't met them or haven't asked them if they games.  It's not like we all wear signs or anything.  Not all gamers go to cons.  Not all gamers go to gaming stores.  And even fewer belong to gaming clubs.  

As for myself, Gencon is the only Con I've been to in the past 7 or 8 years.  I go to the local gaming store about 2 or 3 times a year.  Most of my gaming stuff I buy online or at the local hobby shop whcih sells more models and hobby supplies than gaming stuff.

,Matt G.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I'd have to agree that Dancey's numbers sound right - or at least optimistically correct. Even if your network of gamers is large - there's at least 20 gamers I know in Seattle that I play with regularly - there's plenty of other networks around, and they tend to be fairly separate.

I've recently had the opportunity to start working in a place where almost everyone is a gamer or lapsed gamer, and realized that the amount of gamers I know has to be multiplied by at least 10 to start to touch the amount in my local area.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with Stuart and most of the others here. I, for the first 21 years of my gaming career could be said to have never played with anyone outside of my group of friends, or, at most, people that they may have introduced me to. I certainly never played with anyone from a game store. When I was at school in both Madison and Milwaukee, I never played with the campus clubs despite knowing of their existances.

Why did I never participate in these groups? My friends kept me too busy as it was. Last thing I needed was more players, or more games to play.

I attended conventions. A lot. Consider that as many as 30,000 people attend GenCon in a year. That would be 2% of the entire gaming populace. That sounds like a healthy number. I bet very few industries get that kind of turn out at their conventions.

It's been estimated by some other sources (Skarka, recently, for instance) that this figure might be inflated by as much as twice or so. Making GenCon an astounding 4% or so, as those figures are solid. I'd buy that. But the 80% you're not seeing is simply because they don't want to be seen.

I know I didn't, and still don't for the most part.

They're hiding, and your Game-dar isn't focused tightly enough. They're out there. Watching. Waiting for their time. Look close, you'll spot em.

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

You'll forgive me but the significance of these numbers escape me.

[GMSkarka]

It's been estimated by some other sources (Skarka, recently, for instance) that this figure might be inflated by as much as twice or so.

I did?

GMS

[Valamir]

I think Brian's observation is a VERY important one, but not for the same reason as he initially commented on.  I've experienced the exact same thing as I'm sure many of us here have.  No matter how actively we're engaged in the local gaming scene...we never encounter more than a tiny fraction of gamers in the area.  As Stuart suggests...most of those gamers just aren't involved in any "scene" at all.

Why do I think this is important to recognize?  Well on another thread the idea was put forward that so many people play D&D because that's what they want vs. the idea that so many people play D&D because that's all they know and all their exposed to (substitute "primarily" for "all" as desired).  GMS commented that he thought it unlikely that after 30 years of gaming there were a significant number of gamers who've never been exposed to alternatives to D&D, and thus it could be assumed that the D&D players who exist explicitly chose D&D over the alternatives.

But I submit that it is precisely the "Gaming Scene" where such exposure occurs.  Game Nights at local FLGS, Campus Clubs, Conventions (both local and major), and so forth.  If only a minority fraction of the total gaming populace is participating in the "gaming scene" than only a minority fraction of the total gaming populace has the full exposure that these venues provide.

I'll use Ron's DePaul Club as an example.  Look at all the non standard titles the members of that club have been exposed to.  Its a simple exercise to ask ones self the likely hood of them having been exposed to these titles if they WEREN'T member of that club.  Now most clubs aren't going to go all the way to the small press / indie punk scale of games, but the same logic applies to whatever and however much those clubs play non D&D titles.

For the rest of the gaming populace it is unlikely that exposure has been zero...but IMO it is VERY likely that the exposure to non D&D games and ESPECIALLY to non D&D non WoD (the only other game line to get remotely as much penetration) for those gamers is VASTLY lower.

I think the ratio that Brian observes then neatly divides the gaming populace into Group A, the group which is enough in tune with the gaming scene to hear about, consider and decide to play or not to play non D&D titles.  and Group B, the group which is not in tune with the gaming scene who are much less likely to do the same.

[Mike Holmes]

I did?

I thought you'd said something like that. Forgive me if I've misattributed this to you.

Perhaps it was Bruce (hmmm, looking back at the D20 thread, I see him mentioning "overestimation", but no specific figures). The feeling that I had was that it was someone much more in tune with the "industry" than most people here, so I think I assumed it was you.

As long as your looking, tho, do you know any numbers that would confim or refute the Dancy figures?

Mike

[Matt Snyder]

I think we're seeing two groups of folks, or maybe more simply two kinds of hobbyists. Caveat: This is my . I believe what I'm saying here, but it's based on my observations and little to no data to support anything substantially (as in, enough to make Company X change its mind).

On the one hand, we have legacy groups. These are close-knit social groups that continue to play a particular system for years. They remain, by choice, ignorant of new games and gaming ideas. My own experience tells me these groups are playing games like D&D, Rifts and Rolemaster -- rules sets that enable them to conduct many campaign types. I imagine they're either not buying games at all, or buying only components of their chosen system. I suspect that often the GM is the one buying any product at all. He's (and it usually is a he, though one with several women in his group, in my experience) is also the "innovator". This person may buy other games occasionally.

These kinds of groups are the folks Dancey recognizes.

Then we have another group. These are folks who enjoy buying, reading and even collecting games. They are often young men who've "moved past" their initial gaming experiences and either 1) become heavily invested in some new-to-them game or 2) become extremly interested in a whole range of games, collecting parts of many. Of course, in terms of actual play, they're often playing a very small percentage or even none of the games they've collected / bought.

These are the kinds of folks Brian is decrying (or at least observing).

I think both groups exist in substantial numbers, but I can't  pinpoint those. I simply claim that both groups exist to the scale that it changes or affects the way we think about publishing games. There are, I am sure, other "groups" whose behaviors also effect the hobby in ways we might not expect; we're not discussing them yet.

Obviously, both groups have every right in the world to continue doing what they're doing. The question, then, is what effect they have on the industry and (more interesting to me) what effect they have on the hobby at large.

Effects on the industry:

Group 1 (The Legacy Group) encourage businesses to grow the market, targeting experienced gamers who understand the hobby. Companies see this demographic and want to earn their dollars. It's an uphill battle. They're content folks. The marketing vehicle must get them to acknowledge they not only want, but also need something new. They may come to that conclusion some day, but no ad will do it for them. What's more, is that it's likely they'll only get that one innovator to spend any significant money on product.

Group 2 (The Collectors) enables companies to produce books (and other stuff) that these collectors will gobble up, coughing up money. The problem is that too few of these buyers will make use of the stuff they're buying. They may read it, and enjoy it. They may even cannibalize material for playing some other game. But, there is, relatively speaking, no social dynamic that propagates the game among other people. I haven't ever decided if this trend on a slippery slope will ruin a game company. It seems to me that people buying product is all you'll ever need.

Effects on the hobby:

Group 1 (The Legacy Group) may have a wonderful effect on the hobby, making it a social activity for a number of people in the group that inevitably changes over time with some core group members never changing. Above all else, something gets played. It's the center of activity and the social dynamic. The only "problem" might be that the group remains insular, and its experiences exist in a vacuum, unable to support other groups (or other games!) in the community (via conventions or things like 24-rpg nights at game stores) and possibly unable to support discussion of experiences online. This means that if the group has something valuable or profound to say about "how to game," it remains within the group.

Group 2 (The Collector) often has a deleterious effect on the hobby. The products they purchase exist in some fuzzy realm between game and fiction or simply medium. It's possible, even likely, that game lines then become exactly that -- not-quite-games -- in the effort to propagate sales. The playability or usability, and often the in-game coherency (not GNS coherency) plays second fiddle to salability. This is where some people lament things like "broken splats" or the dreaded "metaplot."

Further, the Collector is not socially connected to other players as they relate to games he purchases. He may collect every product for, say, Fading Suns. But unplayed, his fellow D&D players remain largely ignorant. The effect is not only that these other people don't buy the games themselves, but also that they do not experience myriad games that may have something to offer.

Ok, my brain's outta steam. I guess I'm just trying to acknowledge and reason through some disconnect that Brian is noticing.

[GMSkarka]

As long as your looking, tho, do you know any numbers that would confim or refute the Dancy figures?

A combination of seeing sales from various sources (most of which are governed by confidentiality agreements), combined with personal anecdotal experience since 1988.  Nothing more concrete than that.

In general, I think that the figures are ball-park accurate.

GMS

[GMSkarka]

double-post.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

With apologies to all the other posters' excellent points, it's Matt's that prompted me to respond.

A third group seems worthy of mention as well: the pre-adolescent and adolescent hobby-gamers, most of whom play in a very very local group and then, most of whom don't continue to participate in the hobby by the time they're halfway or all the way through high school.

Now that I think of it, I'd also include a smaller proportion of first-year college students in this category who have a kind of "last hurrah" for gaming (either continuous or discontinuous with the high-school experiences) and then stop.

I see two important consequences arising from this demographic category (both of the above, combined).

1. It's a market that only has to be pleased, per person, for a brief period of time. This is very much the Warhammer M.O., correct? Squeeze the twelve-to-fifteen-year-old spending power (i.e. ability to influence one's parents) as hard as you can until they almost inevitably decide to spend it on something else.

2. It's a market that can display much more impressive booms and crashes than either of the sectors that Matt identified. If a given RPG or whatever happens be incorporated into a given subcultural topic, then wham-bam, all these pubes (if you'll forgive the term) come a'runnin' to buy stuff in the game stores, and in a year or two, they're gone.

Best,
Ron

P.S. For the comics-biz veterans among us (pros or readers or in-between), I'm sure the parallels are clear.

[b_bankhead]

This thread (and the allied on on rpg.net) was produced in the first rush of astonishment as I ran the numbers provided by Mr. Dancey.   Quite a few people seem to think that the numbers are reasonable.  According to this view the pool of 10,000-odd 'missing' are essentially split up into around 1500-2000 groups in my hometown that are almost entirely uncommunicative with ANY outside community ,effectively 1500+ 'gaming Gilligans Islands'.

 If these groups are as coccooned as this theory suggests then there IS NO EFFECTIVE PROACTIVE WAY of the individual communicating with them.

  Given this it's no wonder I'm in a gaming drought.  And now wonder that it seems fit to continue.  Although nobody seems to want to admit it, If this theory is true then the general advice given to people who want to establish a new group are useless. If going to local cons, and visiting shops, and leaving contact sheets and so on can still miss 90+ percent of the available pool then  maybe we should stop waisting people's time by giving it out eh?  The ONLY constructive advice on rpg.net I have gleaned from this thread is 'be a nice guy and pray you bump into some gamers somehow' isn't very proactive or frankly very useful.

Looking at my post on gaming recruitment, all I can say is that if the Dancey numbers are ANYTHING like accurate then the matter of recruitment is worse than I thought! If that many active gamers can be completely missed by and avid gammer looking for years then how many people like me who are unconnected gamers but want to game can there be? Can anybody prove that the numbers aren't as large as the active gamers? NO WONDER ccgs could grow to sales 5-6 times that of the entire rpg field so fast!  

 The sometimes desperate tone of my responses on rpg.net caused the 'it must be your personality' argument to be trotted out despite constantly telling me that the I've never met the 'missing' gamers and won't meet them.  Funny how my terrible personality hasn't driven away all the hordes of CCG players, and Warhammer players,more recently Clickie players, that I've met wandering in the wilderness. Even though I don't like, and am disinterested in their games. Like I've said, If I was into MTG I could start a game ANYTIME.

Proponents f the Dancey number view the sales of D&D as 'proof' of the value of the numbers, but it was the sales of rpg materials that made me take the thesis of a much lower actual player group. At $60million/yr. of all rpg material in retail sales among 1.5 million it's easy to see the average player is spending 77 cents a week on his hobby.  This a pathetically tiny number, I have observed directly MTG players in the critical colleciton building phase regularly spend 20-30 times that a week!  No wonder sales for cards blew fast that of rpgs so quickly, and lets not even talk about how much computer gamers can spend on the games, hardware, hardware upgrades.....  RPG gamers are bigger cheapskates than I thought!

 So I guess it's the Salvation Army for the rest of my Dead Tree rpg material.  And the dustheap for any ambition of professionally prying any money out of this bunch.  At 77 cents a week I'm just waisting my time there too. I'll continue my online gaming of course because I can actaully DO that, and accept but mourn the fact that the f2f phase of my rpg hobby is effectively over.