Earlier this week Wizard of the Coast (via Bloomberg) revealed statistics showing the TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons has hit 40 million players.
Reading through the piece, Wizard of the Coast talked about the game and some interesting statistics came up in which the company has been monitoring since 2013 when Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition launched up to now. Here’s a brief excerpt:
“Wizards has been a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc. since 1999. Stewart says sales of the fifth edition of the game, which was first published in 2014, were up 41 percent in 2017 from the year before, and soared another 52 percent in 2018, the game’s biggest sales year yet. According to Wizards, an estimated 40 million people play the game annually.”
(An update came out on the enworld forums saying that Wizard of the Coast’s PR agency has reached out to Bloomberg about the numbers being from 1974 up to 2019, not annually).
That right, there is still nothing more than amazing in their accomplishments of succeeding with their brand. Which also shows that the current edition is the most popular we’ve seen to date with Dungeons & Dragons.
The sudden growth in popularity and interest for this game has been thanks to a variety of situations. Some come in Twitch shows, where people tune in once (or more) a week at a specific timeframe to watch some hours of people sitting around a table. Here they take the role of many characters and tell an ever-building story with classic good vs. evil, old magic, technology, gods fighting titans, etc.
Shows like Critical Role, High Rollers, Maze Arcana, Force Grey, and so many more, exist to captivate people of all ages to invest their time as well as enjoyment for an experience that’s difficult to explain in words.
Yet it’s still something akin to a mixture of various mediums that will keep you entertained for years.
Wizard of the Coast is about to release a new addition to the roster of books already building upon the enormous world that Dungeons & Dragons takes place within.
What are your thoughts on these revelations from Wizard of the Coast? Let us know down in the comments section!
