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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Mike Holmes wrote:
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 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.

GMSkarka wrote: I did?

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.

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

double-post.

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.

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.

Ummm...

This seems like an overreaction.

Have you tried looking at various gamer registries? Various game companies and websites have them.

In about 30 seconds, I did a search for Columbus, Ohio on White Wolf's game finder and came up with 203 matches with e-mail addresses. You can probably find more with a little work...

Stuart

Hi there,

Oh, I dunno about that face-to-face despair ...

A lot of people have experienced something of a personal Renaissance in this regard through interactions on the Forge, whether due to meeting people directly or by trying new strategies for finding them.

Best,
Ron

Well, I've always approached finding new gamers the mormon way. Convert them. Or rather, introduce the idea to friends who aren't gamers.

Though, realistically, I spend more energy thinking of nice ways to say 'no, you cannot play in our group we are full.'

Warning: this post is filled with supposition, without facts to back it up. In addition, it makes several broad statements about people who play role-playing games, which should be taken in about the same way Greg Stafford tells you to read descriptions of Gloranthan cultures: it holds true for about 80% of the population, with the rest being different, but in the context of the culture as a whole.

Bryan, the points I want to pull out of your last post are this:
- Role-playing groups are very "cocooned" compared to CCG or "clicky-game" gamers.
- Current methods of finding role-playing gamers aren't working, at least for you.
- If Dancey's numbers are correct, RPGers don't spend much money on their hobby.

Role-playing gamers are cocooned, by choice. This morning, on the Forge, I saw someone say that their wife had a problem with them playing role-playing games. Role-players don't talk about their hobby among people they don't play with, and accept the disdain of those who know. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they invite the disdain.

What does this have to do with you not being able to find gamers?

Simply, being a nice guy and hoping to find gamers will not work. Even trolling in game stores won't: have you ever tried to talk to another customer in a game store? Usually, their head is down and lips are shut, and communication is nigh impossible with 'em. Why? I'll tell you my opinion: we have a mass dysfunction that we keep infecting new role-players with, the dysfunction of shame.

This is exactly why groups get cocooned - four or five people play with the same four or five people they've always played with, afraid to talk to new people because of the shame, and afraid to leave their group because they won't find another. These people don't necessarily have to fit the "I-look-just-like-Gygax" gamer stereotype, either: you'll find these groups matched by social skills, socio-economic level, industry, and other interests, resulting in the information technology group, the amateur-theatre group, the Goth group, the young executive group, and the racially-homogenous group.

Now that we've tackled why they're cocooned: how do you un-cocoon? How do you find these guys?

At first, I wanted to say, "Be public about your hobby." Read Hero Wars on a bus. When people at work ask about your weekend, tell them about your real weekend, where you played D&D or whatever. That's certainly still fine advice: it's how I found out everyone I work with either games or has gamed.

Better advice, though: be useful to the community. The role-playing community is made up of people that feed from it and do not contribute back. These are people who go to "find-a-gamer" sites like Access Denied and look for gamers in their area and don't enter their own information, people who go to the game store and look on the bulletin board for a group and don't put up an invitation, among other things.

Two examples of finding gamers through contributing, both involving my favorite test subject, me:

- Alan Barclay, a Seattle gamer, started what he calls "Monday Indie Game night" here in Seattle. (It's now metamorphed into "Monday Game night," as we play all sorts of RPGs.) He leveraged an existing network - a highly-dysfunctional e-mailing list for Seattle gamers - to advertise the game night, but organized it and runs it weekly. New people show up all the time, and we find more RPGers each week, all getting to play with new people weekly and interact on a real, social level. I'm involved in this because I run at least two games a month here, but the real work was all Alan.
- Me and the Forge. I am your average gamer. I have piss-poor social skills, usually. I am self-destructive, a procrastinator, and introverted. Yet, there's a large network of people who like me, are gamers, and that I play with. Why? I made myself useful. I took a site that needed help to stay up, and not only kept it going, but helped build it into a huge place for gamers to meet and talk. Therefore, people know my name and know I'm a gamer. I could travel to most metropolitan cities and game that night. In my own community, I've met all the people I play with through here or Monday Game Night. Strangely, there's no one here from New Orleans, where I am moving, so in order to make myself useful, I've started NAGA, the Nawlins Gaming Association, in order to provide a forum for the gamers I know are there and are separated from the major networks.

Lastly, to tackle the money issue: those same groups that have been together for 5-25 years are playing the same game because of their isolation. Not to pick on anyone - and I swear I'm not - but ask M.J. Young. He's run successful AD&D 1st edition campaigns for years, not having to buy any more supplements for the game, because his group is fairly cohesive and he likes the game. (Tell me if I'm misrepresenting something, M.J.)

Over-reaction, I'd agree. I mean, a moment ago you were content to think that only X number existed, Dancey was wrong, and you were willing to find them. Now that the number has increased potentially tenfold, it's harder to find players? How's there any logic behind that. Just because you realize that there are a lot of gamers who don't advertise doesn't mean that suddenly all the gamers that you've targeted previously have gone away.

Anyhow. This shouldn't be a surprise. We said the exact same thing in the thread about the problems with marketing in game stores. I think you just didn't get the magnitude of the implication then. What we ought to do is try to figure out how to market to the stay at home player.

And they're not so insulated as you seem to think. I mean while I never played outside my own small circle of friends, I certainly went to game stores, and read gaming periodicals, and learned about stuff online. I just never used these things as a source of play. And I think I'm pretty typical that way.

So the gamer is more informed than I think most would make them out to be. But it's like trying to sell a new set of steak knives to the guy watching the commercial at home when he's already got steak knives. Sure you might have better knives, but what's wrong with the one's he's got? While Ralph wants to think that gamers are blissfully unaware of the existence of other games, I'd have to disagree. They know other games exist. They just don't care. It's hard to penetrate this person's lack of percieved need. Do you buy the steak knives when you see them on TV? Even if yours aren't the perfect steak knives you've always wanted?

But it's not impossible. You can be proactive. How? Well, there are the game stores. These two groups are not mutually exclusive. So if you can hook a new player at a game store with a game, maybe he'll take it home.

And, hey, if I'd ever been caught in a store by someone offering to play an RPG demo on the spot, I'da played it. But you know what? It's never happened to me. I've actually never seen one other than RPG.NET's game day, whcih I traveled to specifically.

That's right in 25 years of regularly visiting FLGS's I've not once seen an RPG demo "accidentally", much less played in one. I'm sure they've run them, but if there was info on it, I wasn't looking for it. So there's another layer of impenetrability. But RPG.Net of all sources was the one thing that brought me to a demo. So it can be done, you just have to make significant events of things.

Conventions are very successful, for example. I'm betting that if you go run your game at a convention that you can find some players there (he said tongue in cheek). I don't know how many demo's of indie games we ran last year at GenCon, but it was a titanic number. So there are ways to sell.

Now, if you're thinking that you can beat the D&D stranglehold on the industry with these tactics you're sorely mistaken. As Mr. Skarka points out (I checked this time), unless you have a multi-million dollar advertising budget you don't even have a chance. But that is not, nor has it ever been, the Indie goal. The indie goal is to sell to the small number of people who have a desire to pley something else, and are looking, and to sell to people who've never played RPGs before but are willing.

So you want more players? Create them. Do you have friends who don't play? Have you asked them if they'd like to try? You want to be proactive? Then do your small part to make gamers from the people who aren't curently. If they start with something other than D&D, then they'll never become part of the D&D entrenched crowd.

The hopelessness just isn't warranted.

Mike

{edited to note the cross-post with Clinton}

Mike Holmes wrote: Over-reaction, I'd agree. I mean, a moment ago you were content to think that only X number existed, Dancey was wrong, and you were willing to find them. Now that the number has increased potentially tenfold, it's harder to find players? How's there any logic behind that

b_bankhead wrote: Well maybe my opinion has been changed by the debate? That CAN happen you know, even on the internet....

Mike Holmes wrote:

b_bankhead wrote: Well maybe my opinion has been changed by the debate? That CAN happen you know, even on the internet....

Remarkable as that may be, that wasn't anyone's intention. They were trying to convince you that there are more gamers out there than you thought. And your conclusion is that, therefore, you'll never be able to find any of them.

Mike Holmes wrote:

b_bankhead wrote: Well maybe my opinion has been changed by the debate? That CAN happen you know, even on the internet....

Remarkable as that may be, that wasn't anyone's intention. They were trying to convince you that there are more gamers out there than you thought. And your conclusion is that, therefore, you'll never be able to find any of them.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Anyhow. This shouldn't be a surprise. We said the exact same thing in the thread about the problems with marketing in game stores. I think you just didn't get the magnitude of the implication then. What we ought to do is try to figure out how to market to the stay at home player.

So you want more players? Create them. Do you have friends who don't play? Have you asked them if they'd like to try? You want to be proactive? Then do your small part to make gamers from the people who aren't curently. If they start with something other than D&D, then they'll never become part of the D&D entrenched crowd.

The hopelessness just isn't warranted.

Mike

{edited to note the cross-post with Clinton}

Hi,

This post of Brian's has been heavily discussed on rpg.net at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=0cb136a0ff2e2a544a429928c58ad9c3&threadid=48789&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

where many people have advanced reasons why gamers might not be visible (similar to those mentioned here) and many others have suggested concrete ways in which Brian might find gamers in his area, in one instance even providing a link to a club active in his area (much as SLizard has attempted here).

Those interested in the debate may also find that thread useful.

It wasn't until I ran the number that i realized what you were talking about. At a 7% profit margin someone who wants an income of $25,000 per year needs a customer base of 8922 gamers spending 77 cent a week to make a living off rpgs. No wonder game shops go out of business or move in the card displays. My feeling that game shops go out of business providing gaming space for rpg gamers has become solidified by this figure. I know for a fact a person with an acute card jones can spend 20-30 times that weekly for a year or more.

A few thoughts occur to me about these many intertwined issues.

1. The numbers strike me as reasonable, if you factor in Ron's very essential group: high school gamers. In my very, very small high school, there was once a little D&D tournament, and suddenly it turned out that some 10% of the male population of the school gamed, or were will willing to join in as long as it looked like fun (and had actually played at least a little bit at some point). At college, the numbers dropped through the floor.

2. Isolation and insularity are clearly major factors, and I think the big point (as Clinton mentioned) is social pressure. C'mon, admit it: RPGs are seen as a geek thing, done primarily by pimply science guys who would stop instantly if they had anything better to do on a weekend night, and somebody to do it with and to. If you admit to being a gamer, you take a risk; in some venues, this risk is perceived as severe (as in, likely to get you fired or at least not promoted, likely to get you ostracized, etc.). We haven't reached the stage of doing Gamer Pride marches yet. Have you ever noticed how many homosexuals there are supposed to be, as opposed to how many are very obvious and out just walking down the street? Off by at least an order of magnitude, right? We need Game-dar! :)

3. The correlation I see (and I have no hard numbers here) between gamers and Neo-Paganism, especially when it comes to female gamers, seems sufficiently strong that you're getting a parallel effect about "outing" going on. You don't "out" witches if you want to remain their friends; you don't "out" gamers either. Lots of gamers I know think the mainstream considers gaming a cult phenomenon, and while they may be overreacting, some ugly things have happened, after all.

4. I do think that most game groups reach a critical mass, and then don't look for new players. When they need a new player, which is relatively rare, they ask around among their immediate friends, and half the time hope to drag in somebody's partner. If people aren't looking, you can't find them.

5. Clinton has given by far the best advice around: be noticed, be helpful, make a name for yourself. And have no shame whatever. Carry RPG books around with you -- preferably very recognizable ones.

6. I also think it is entirely possible that Columbus is NOT average demographics for RPGs, but I doubt that it's off by all that much.

7. I would really like to know where this estimate came from; can somebody point me to a link or whatever? I just really wonder how anybody came up with an estimate for a group that doesn't communicate with others and mostly doesn't buy anything. Is this supposed to be a serious estimate? How large are the error bars -- an order of magnitude?