Attempting a wisom of crowds, crude longitudinal survey I compiled a bunch of different player surveys over time. First off thanks to all those out there who leave clear, findable records of their surveys. Kudos.
Second - the major problem with this kind of survey is that people bucket their time ranges very differently from coarse "1-2, 3-4, 4+" style to 'enter a number' clear space which leads sometimes to mini-essays that are difficult to parse (what was one supposed to make of "currently X but had a lot of Y"?). Hence the cumulative population curves to try and squeeze an apples to apples comparison out of all this.
Overall the story appears to be that most of the player population is getting in 2-6 hour sessions, with 2.5-5 hours covering about half of all players. This gels with what we typically see on the front of Adventurers league modules and what we used to run for a convention slot at Leprecon.
However, this then tells me my 'normal' gaming experience is pretty atypical. The yellow curve on the graphs is a slightly different question from the 2014 survey asking 'how much gaming per week' and the lows and highs indicate that a) some people are not getting in any gaming (~15% of respondents at the time) and some portion of the population is getting in a hell of a lot of gaming ~30% getting in 2 typical sessions and ~5% playing very long haul sessions.
Taking the 4 examples from my own experiences
- my local Adventurers Leauge Friday night meetup gang used to meet at 7pm and run regularly to past midnight on what were supposed to be 2-3 hour modules.
- my current home game started as a 4.5 hour evening slot - 7pm to midnight by design, aiming for every second week and had crept up towards weekly 6+ slots. This may be pandemic driven of course.
- I played a friends L5R campaign that was a weekly after work 7pm to 11:30 (4.5 on the nose).
- years ago we ran Living Arcanis modules which were similar 7pm to midnight 5hr sessions.
I wish I had data enough to cross check against ages - I bet there is a frequency drop, length up-tick that corresponds to people hitting 'serious job + family' - and therefore the logistical trouble to get a table together drives a preference for longer games.
Sources:
| Name | Year | Size | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elderbrain | 2020 | 2044 | Survey |
| Facebook D&D 5e | 2020 | 1131 | Survey |
| Sly Flourish DMs | 2016 | 6600 | Survey |
| Reddit D&D | 2014 | 1734 | Survey |
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