# Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0



## Dannager

Only partway through the study (which I've seen referenced many times but never presented in full) but so far what struck me as the most surprising was the fact that, in 1999, *28%* of tabletop RPG players were playing tabletop games online on at least a monthly basis. That's really an incredible translation in medium, especially for pre-21st-century internet.


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## DesOps

Very interesting breakdown. I am curious if this research takes online sales into account. (Ebay, etc)


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## Stormonu

I wonder how much this has changed from 2000, especially in the light of changes in electronics, such as the additions of tablets and smartphones.


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## Jhaelen

Stormonu said:


> I wonder how much this has changed from 2000, especially in the light of changes in electronics, such as the additions of tablets and smartphones.



So do I! Especially since I missed that important detail... I was just going to publicly wonder about the list of rpg systems that people were playing since it doesn't list any of the more recent systems


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## darjr

I do want someone to redo this survey. Either exactly or part of a larger set.


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## Morrus

darjr said:


> I do want someone to redo this survey. Either exactly or part of a larger set.




I'm currently planning a large survey.  It'll be online only, which will skew the results a bit,  but I think a similar sample size is attainable.  I also want to delve a little bit into some data not there - genres, game aids, family gamers, and the like.

You can tell it was a different era - no mention of purchasing RPGs online (Amazon and the like), top age was 35 because that was how old D&D was.


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## darjr

When you do this will there be some PR stuff like a flyer that can be posted at flgs and sent on lists and posted to other sites?


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## Mark CMG

Morrus said:


> I'm currently planning a large survey.  It'll be online only, which will skew the results a bit,  but I think a similar sample size is attainable.





Contact GAMA and see if they can do it in association with you and pool your results.  They could likely do it through retail outlets with some efficiency.


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## billd91

As interesting as the survey is, it does have some serious flaws. Cutting the age off at 35 was a bad idea. And with the graphic results, notice the age cohorts. Now tell me how anyone can infer anything really reliable from the compiled results. 12-15 covers 4 years, 16-18 covers 3, 19-24 covers 6, and the last group covers 11!


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## Morrus

billd91 said:


> As interesting as the survey is, it does have some serious flaws. Cutting the age off at 35 was a bad idea. And with the graphic results, notice the age cohorts. Now tell me how anyone can infer anything really reliable from the compiled results. 12-15 covers 4 years, 16-18 covers 3, 19-24 covers 6, and the last group covers 11!




Bearing in mind that D&D was only 25 years old at the time, I wonder if the figures dropped sharply after 35?  Or if that's part of the data that was withheld?


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## billd91

Morrus said:


> Bearing in mind that D&D was only 25 years old at the time, I wonder if the figures dropped sharply after 35?  Or if that's part of the data that was withheld?




According to the survey itself:



			
				WotC survey said:
			
		

> This age bracket was arbitrarily chosen on the basis of internal analysis regarding the probable target customers for the company's products. We know for certain that there are lots of gamers older than 35, especially for games like Dungeons & Dragons; however, we wanted to keep the study to a manageable size and profile. Perhaps in a few years a more detailed study will be done of the entire population.




They basically said they weren't interested in inferring anything about their whole customer base, just a segment they thought would be interesting. So what do we know about players over 35 in 1999? There is absolutely nothing this survey can tell us and these would have been people who were prime target gamers back in D&D's early days, including the game's creators and more than a small segment of the people who had a hand in developing it over the years up to 1999. It struck me as a significant flaw in the survey since it's an obvious source of systematic bias.


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## Morrus

billd91 said:


> They basically said they weren't interested in inferring anything about their whole customer base, just a segment they thought would be interesting. So what do we know about players over 35 in 1999? There is absolutely nothing this survey can tell us and these would have been people who were prime target gamers back in D&D's early days, including the game's creators and more than a small segment of the people who had a hand in developing it over the years up to 1999. It struck me as a significant flaw in the survey since it's an obvious source of systematic bias.




So the next question would be - why did they not do the followup survey?  (Or maybe they did, but didn't publish it like this one - I suspect that's not the case, though).


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## CutGlass

My day job not so long ago was as a statistician for a market research company, doing exactly the sorts of segmentation analyses this survey required. I listened to an interview with Ryan Dancey about it on the Fear the Boot podcast, and had some slight concerns about how the results were calculated. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get much detail about it in response. I'd love to get my hands on the raw data some day to analyse it myself, but I suspect that won't happen.

If there is a follow-up survey at some point, I'd be happy to offer whatever help I could.


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## I'm A Banana

Sweet sexy data! Mmmmmmmm, so delicious. 

I'm with @CutGlass -- I don't have his/her experience, but stuff like this makes me eager to dip into spreadsheets.


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## Morrus

There will be a followup. But WotC won't be involved, and it'll be a sample of gamers online, rather than random US households.  Both samples have their strengths/weaknesses (the former doesn't touch those not online - though we will ask about others in their gaming group; the latter doesn't touch those not in America).  But we'll do it, and get a similar sample size and - hopefully-  far more detail.


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## CutGlass

I've registered a profile now to make it easier to get hold of me if needed. My experience is more with analysis than questionnaire design and so forth, but I could probably provide some commentary and assistance on that too.

What exactly would the aim of this new survey be? A market segmentation, as before, or something else or additional?


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