Is Google Trends predicting the end of D&D?

Posted on October 10, 2008 by RupertG
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I was having a quick play with Google Trends the other day. Google trends, for those of you unfamiliar with the service, shows trends in keyword search volume. This can show you how many people are searching for keywords over a period of time, and they are often used to show the popularity of an artist or celebrity or news item. Being bit of a gaming geek, I looked up the keywords D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons and Dragons and D&D 4e. 

This is what I got:

There are obvious spikes around the death of Gary Gygax (RIP), the announcement of D&D 4e and the actual release of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, but overall, its a pretty downhill slide.

Does this actually mean anything? Well, I decided I would try to see if there were any way of explaining the slide as a good thing. Maybe people searching for content were being smarter about their searches. I tried the following:

  • playing a wizard in d&d
  • warlock class in d&d 4e
  • d&d 3.5

None of these showed anything other than no results or the same downward spiral. I then wondered if this was common to all role-playing games. Interestingly, no… While they do not have anywhere near the same volume, some actually show an upward trend. “Call of Cthulhu” and “Vampire” are two noticable examples of this.

While we have known for a long time that tabletop role-playing games was a dying hobby, the above results show two things. Firstly, D&D is probably not going to actually die any time soon, but its numbers are decreasing. It seems fairly obvious that D&D 4e is an attempt to appeal to people experienced with WoW and other MMORPG’s. The other thing that is shown by this is that smaller, niche games, are still doing ok, and will probably continue to grow at a small rate as players leave D&D looking for something different and perhaps, dare I say it, a little more adult…

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About RupertG

RupertG has been playing roleplaying games ever since he discovered Dragon Warriors at the age of 12. Since those days he has played many different RPG's, collected not insignificant Dwarf and Tomb Kings armies for Warhammer Fantasy Battles and even worked as a games designer in the heady days of the late 90's building a CCG. Now he runs a gaming blog and is a participant in the Grand Gaming Experiment
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  • dwayne

    Alternatively, it could be a reflection of the mainstreaming of the internet – geek specific things are making up a smaller percentage of the content even if they’re not actually reducing. Though your interpretation is probably right…

  • dwayne

    Alternatively, it could be a reflection of the mainstreaming of the internet – geek specific things are making up a smaller percentage of the content even if they’re not actually reducing. Though your interpretation is probably right…

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    I did mention that that was a possibility (more refined searching). I tried to find evidence of it, but couldn’t. Doesn’t mean its not true, but I suspect that it isn’t. Most people when they search for something like this do include a keyword like D&D in the terms to filter out non-relevant results. And then add to that that the trend is down to 1/3 of what it was 4-5 years ago and it doesn’t look good.

    Anyway, it is certainly not conclusive – only sales data would really prove anything beyond a doubt, it was just a thought…

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    I did mention that that was a possibility (more refined searching). I tried to find evidence of it, but couldn’t. Doesn’t mean its not true, but I suspect that it isn’t. Most people when they search for something like this do include a keyword like D&D in the terms to filter out non-relevant results. And then add to that that the trend is down to 1/3 of what it was 4-5 years ago and it doesn’t look good.

    Anyway, it is certainly not conclusive – only sales data would really prove anything beyond a doubt, it was just a thought…

  • dwayne

    no, my point is that the trend could look down because other searches are increasing in number while d&d related ones are staying constant. you’d have to get some idea of the absolute numbers involved to know for sure, not just the relative values.

  • dwayne

    no, my point is that the trend could look down because other searches are increasing in number while d&d related ones are staying constant. you’d have to get some idea of the absolute numbers involved to know for sure, not just the relative values.

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    Could you give us an example of what you mean by other searches perhaps?

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    Could you give us an example of what you mean by other searches perhaps?

  • mardo

    Maybe he means ALL other searches.

    I will take the Overly positive view and suggest that people who like D&D already know all the stuff,
    and the only people who search are newcomers!

  • mardo

    Maybe he means ALL other searches.

    I will take the Overly positive view and suggest that people who like D&D already know all the stuff,
    and the only people who search are newcomers!

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#1

    It is search volume, so it will be affected by the growth in the number of users on the web, but it is also scaled and normalised to help give it more accuracy.

  • http://www.diceofdoom.com RupertG

    http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#1

    It is search volume, so it will be affected by the growth in the number of users on the web, but it is also scaled and normalised to help give it more accuracy.