The Results Are In (Part 1)

 

Readers validated my preference.

         

I waited until I didn't get a response for 24 hours to analyze the results. Overall, I got 615 responses, which is about half of the unique visitors per day, but about two-thirds of unique visitors who stay for more than two minutes. That's not a bad response rate. Shame on the rest of you.

   

Here are some top-level results:

   

Game of the Year 

    

Betrayal at Krondor fans may have been vocal in the comments, but on the survey, it got fewer votes than "no opinion." The plurality went to Dark Sun, with 40% of total votes and 49% of those voting for one of the four nominees. The second-highest number of votes were from those who wanted me to award "Game of the Year" two years in a row to the Ultima Underworld series. I get the sentiment; the games are that ground-breaking.

       

Votes for "Game of the Year."

        

There were impassioned write-ins for Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness, Lands of Lore, Perihelion, Ultima VII, Part Two, and Unlimited Adventures. I agree these were all good games, but I think I covered why I felt they were not GOTY-worthy.

   

In the end, I'm going to go with my original inclination to give the award to Dark Sun. It is what I like most in a role-playing game: Lots of statistics, tactical combat, inventory upgrades, dialogue options, meaningful encounters, and a setting that fires the imagination. To get a perfect 100, a game just needs to do more of these things. 

 

Where You Come From 

 

Okay, mea culpa: I should not have conflated "where do you live?" with "where are you from?" Nor should I have conflated "country" with "nation" (man, are some people sensitive about that).

   

There were some surprises here. I figured at least half of my readership was from the United States, but it's only 38%. The second-highest number of readers are from Germany (13%); that article in Der Spiegel really paid off. The expected succession of English-speaking countries follows, with Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia all between 3% and 5%. Finland, Poland, Spain Austria, Italy, Brazil, Sweden, and France all contributed between 10 and 20 readers and 1-3% each. There's a very long tail of countries with less than 10 readers and less than 2% of total readership. On the entire continent of Africa, I have one reader in South Africa. I also have very little readership in Asia, aside from four in Japan, one in Singapore, one in Malaysia, and perhaps one in Türkiye depending on where he is.

         

I need billboards along the silk road.

            

Here's something that I thought was an oddity: Except for one reader from Peru who insisted on the grave over the "u," not a single reader rendered the name of their country in native form. That is, I didn't get a single Deutschland, Polska, or España, with or without the tilde. Now, I know that you all knew that you were responding to an American survey, but it makes me curious how often the natives of a country use exonyms even to themselves. In the United States, no American would ever think of his country as Los Estados Unidos unless he grew up speaking Spanish, nor would he say Les États-Unis in conversation with another American unless he was making some sort of affectation. I would bet that fewer than 5% of Americans are even aware of Měiguó, Yhdysvallat, or Bandaríkin, among many others. Is this the same in your country, or do Germans casually use "Germany" even to other Germans?

    

I remember saying this before in a random entry, but it has continually surprised me, in this era of personally-defined pronouns, person-first language, and land acknowledgements that some movement hasn't arisen to eliminate exonyms. Other than Türkiye, I've never even heard of a country that seems to care.

      

That's why I write my blog in Tennessee.

       

In the United States, I have readers in all states except Arkansas, Connecticut, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Rhode Island. The totals mostly follow population trends, with Texas and California at the highest (which is impressive, as I forgot to add it to the selection list for the first 25% of results). None of our territories are represented except for one reader in American Samoa. I have only one respondent each from the two states that matter most to me, Maine and Louisiana.

      

Sex

    

Well, there's no avoiding it: the CRPG Addict may as well be a frat house. At least 92% of readers are men. I have fewer women than those who didn't want to give their gender at all. I have almost as many readers who identify as non-binary than I have women.

    

This imbalance raises two possibilities. One is that my readership is simply reflective of the overall RPG gamer population. I went searching for statistics on the issue and found various sources that estimated the overall computer gaming population at about 50% women but the population of RPG players specifically closer to 18-25%. (I put this aside to research more later; I'm declining to cite sources because I don't want to get into a long argument about validity right now.) Either way, that's a lot more than the 3% who responded to my survey.

       

However you look at it, this blog is a sausage party.

       

I'd be interested in any follow-up comments (feel free to email directly) from women readers regarding their thoughts on the disparity. I feel like the commenting system successfully hides the commenter's sex (unless you're commenting with an account that includes your actual name), and in 16 years of doing this, I've never seen any gender-based comments between readers, certainly nothing that would rise to the level of harassment or "toxic masculinity" or whatever. I like to think my own writing is relatively free of anything that would turn away women specifically, but let me know if I'm fooling myself.

 

The relationship between player sex and chosen character is interesting. Of the 17 women who responded to my survey, 15 preferred to play a female character (one didn't care, and one preferred a male character). Male respondents, on the other hand, were 21% likely to prefer a female avatar, and another 34% were at least open to it (the remaining 44% preferred men). Non-binary respondents generally preferred "the opposite sex" (67%), which I don't quite know how to interpret. (The fault is mine, of course, for not leaving enough options on the question.)

 

Your Favorite RPGs

       

This one took a lot of data-cleaning, as I made it a free-text field. If you put two games, I counted them both, but if you put more than that, I just counted the first one. In the end, I'm pleased to say that Baldur's Gate was the clear winner with 38 votes, followed by its sequel with 37. Number three was also an Infinity Engine game: Planescape: Torment. The Top 10 list includes only one game that I've never played (the original Fallout) and otherwise aligns well with my own idea of the best RPGs.

        

Your favorite games.

       

The list is definitely biased towards older games; the only candidates in the last decade are Baldur's Gate 3 (10) and Disco Elysium (6). Having just finished Pillars of Eternity, I was surprised that I didn't get a single vote for it, although there is one for its sequel. I really enjoyed the first game, particularly the depth of its lore, its replayability, and its role-playing options. (I looked at a walkthrough when I was finished and discovered that I had missed three joinable NPCs.) I confess I didn't know half of what was happening in combat. 

 

     

Other Findings

    

• The average (mean and median) age of readers is 45, which makes sense given my content. 87% are between the ages of 37 and 56. Only 13% are at or above my own age of 53. I have no readers under the age of 19 and only one over the age of 68. I would like to hear from that 81-year-old reader. You would have already been an adult when the first commercial RPGs were released; how did you get into what was, at the time, a young person's hobby?

        

Our heavily-clustered age distribution.

       

• Most of my readers are long-time readers. Half of them started reading before 2015. The mode (71 readers) was 2012. 62 people (the third-highest total) have been with me since the first year. I gained only 14 new readers in 2024 and only 13 in 2025. I wonder if I should do something to ease new readers into the blog; comments are welcome there.

• Well over half of readers check in every 1-3 days, though they're divided by those who read everything (34%) and those who pick only the ones they care about (22%). I guess an awful lot of people are still getting the blog via RSS, which I should have asked about.

• Only 4 respondents use a translator to read the blog. For 52%, English is your first language, and for 47%, you read the blog in English anyway. 

• Not a lot of duplication on favorite entries. The highest-voted was 6, for my winning entry on Ultima VII: The Black Gate; another four voted for the "Summary and Rating." Fate: Gates of Dawn showed up a lot, but for different entries. 

• A third of respondents have never commented, and half commented only "very rarely." I enjoy my frequent visitors, but it's a sign of a healthy blog to have a diversity of comments. I encourage those of you who never or rarely post a comment to do so occasionally, if only to highlight something you agree with. No blogger can get enough of those.

• People overwhelmingly (74%) felt that my standard goal of one entry every 2.5 days was just fine. Part of me wants to hear more from the dozen or so respondents who think that goal is "far too little." You have time to read 2,500 words a day?

• Respondents were supportive of occasional guest entries, which corresponds well with my plan.

• Of respondents who even knew what I was talking about, 79% of them were perfectly okay with taking a filet mignon, putting it in a blender, and serving it as a shake. Well, technically, the question was about soft-serve ice cream, but it's basically the same thing. Here's a good article for you soft-serve lovers, by the way.

• 38% of my readers prefer sweat to sweaters. 

• Among my readership, I have 44 game developers and 7 game producers or executives. I assume we're just waiting for the ink to dry on those consulting contracts. 

• Most of my readers are non-religious of one type or another, to a far greater extent than population demographics would predict. I wonder if I've just scared away most of the believers with my ungodliness.

• I'm saving responses on virtue, ethics, and religion for a juicier posting later on. 

• My default character is usually a paladin, which was the second-highest vote-getter among respondents (111). Mages were first (199); druids (23) and priests (24) were lowest. My apologies for not including a "ranger" option, though. 

• Readers are well-adjusted when it comes to the amount of time they spend on games. 43% would like to spend more time gaming, and 38% are comfortable with the time they currently spend.

     

I'm still working on some of the more complex questions, but I thought I give this to you to chew on in the meantime.