2020 Was the Best Year Ever for Pen&Paper Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is experiencing a golden age. 2020 was the best year ever for the brand. It was also reported how many people are playing the game and the number is impressive.
Wizards of the Coast boasted that 2020 was the best year in the history of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Sales revenue was 33% higher than in 2019. What's more, it was the seventh consecutive year of growth. It is worth noting here that these figures apply only to the pen&paper RPG version. The publisher does not "pump up" the results with amounts earned, for example, from licensing video games.
Last year, an increase in sales was noted in the basic manual books for D&D, such as Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide. The supplements also did very well - Tasha's Cauldron of Everything reached the largest pre-orders in the history of the publishing house.
Wizards of the Coast reported that the player community of Dungeons & Dragons is now over 50 million people.. In this group, 40% are women. Data on the age of the players have also been released.
Age of Dungeons & Dragons players
Age (in years) | Share of this age group among D&D players: |
15-19 | 12% |
20-24 | 24% |
25-29 | 18% |
30-34 | 18% |
35-39 | 14% |
40 | 13% |
Last March, the publisher launched its "Stay at Home, Play at Home" campaign, which encouraged gamers to stay at home. The free content made available as part of it was said to have been downloaded by millions of people. In addition, the annual D&D Live event, which took place online in 2020, was followed by over 4 million people across various video platforms.
This year also promises to be very good for the brand. Next month, the action RPG Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance will debut on PC and consoles. This is a very important project, because Wizards of the Coast will be its publisher and owns the studio responsible for its development, Tuque Games. Previously, the publisher only granted licenses to other developers and companies to create video games.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is coming to PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and PS5. The PC edition will be available both on Steam and Epic Games Store. The game is scheduled for release on June 22, this year.
