Scouring the web for information we do not find many polls but those that do exist say more or less the same thing - friends or family are the primary channel for new joiners to get into the hobby ~ 2/3 of players find their way to the hobby that way.
This all comes off attempting to delve into 5 year shift seen in age profiles of recent joiners:
For those polls where there was more detail on how people got into the hobby, I attempted to spot if web media / streaming is increasing as a share of the non-"friends and family" and there is no clear indication of this. The sparse data makes it hard to draw a strong conclusion but certainly there is no visible big swing like in the data on age of joining.
To sum up there has been a big shift in 'who' is coming to the hobby but it appears that this has happened by the same routes as before - friends and family. Streaming does not appear to be the huge on-ramp funnel it is hailed as but the point made about RPGs getting a spot as 'a reason to spend face-to-face time with friends' fits this. Perhaps the increased visibility of all sorts of people playing on streams serves to normalise and mainstream the hobby such that existing RPG gamers are more comfortable asking their non-gamer friends if they want to join in or more successful in getting them to say yes and give it a shot?
[Edit to add: All the above does not match with the statements from Wizards of the Coast about research on drivers for joining showing "the number one reason is ‘I saw someone playing online and I joined.’” It seems strange that something as mainstream as a main D&D 5e Facebook group would not show more indication of streaming being a big lead in. My gut feel is there are missing pieces to the jigsaw - are these communities isolated from those who watch streaming? Assuming yes, and the WotC research is correct, what other big differences are not visible?]
Other sources are: Who introduced you to DnD? from the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition facebook group in 2020.
"How were you introduced to Roleplaying" from RPG.net in 2019.
Replica of 1985 Dragon Magazine survey from Kirith blog - taking just 2017 data as other years less than 50 data points.
A friends/not friends break-down from RPG.net in 2011 - cannot break out the not-friends data by what inspired people to teach themselves.
How were you introduced to RPGs? from Enworld in 2009.
What was your gaming "gateway"? from Enworld in 2006.
Wizards of the Coast marketing department claims that in 2019 more people learned how D&D was played by watching video than were introduced by friends. They did say it was only by a small margin. I don't have a specific link to that handy but I did hear it said by WotC staff on a couple different podcasts.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I have heard similar things and I have tried to back track them to a source without much luck so far. I expected to see an uptick in people coming in from streams/the web but... not that anyone is admitting to?
DeleteI would definitely like to hear of any other sources I should look at.