I think the moat interesting admission from WotC has nothing to so with generations, but the admission that 2E AD&D remained the dominant "I started playing" version until well into 5E. That speaks volumes about the problems 3E, 3.5, and 4E experienced in actually growing the brand.
I do not understand that statement at all however, given that they sold around half as many 2e core books as 1e, and that sold slightly less than BX/BECMI for a while.
So I cannot get to that point at all
I think we cleared up the first bit, it is about the edition current players started with. Not sure why 2e had more staying power, but apparently it did.
This probably does explain things a bit. Lots of people who played a lot of 1e actually started with oD&D, B, BX, or BECMI/RC/Intro Boxes. That so many of them eventually went to AD&D explains how 1e could be such a good performer core-book-wise, but the people still not count in the analysis*. There is also probably quite a bit of drop-off effect/staying power issues that contribute, but I don't have what I think about that completely formulated in my mind.
*Should probably check to see how well Metzer/RC/Intro Boxes did during '89+ to see if 2e had a similar effect.
While I played 1st edition a little, I consider 2nd edition to be the one I started with because in 1989 that's when I had enough funds to start buying my own books. I would have expected more people to have started with 3.0 or 3.5. This is surprising to me.
<anecdotal> I know a lot of people who came back to D&D with 3e -- usually after a hiatus where they explored other games like GURPS or White Wolf WoD or some other game that had their heyday in the 80s-90s. I know some people who came back to D&D with 3e after a long break from playing TRPGs in general (often that break between having kids and the kids being old enough to leave alone without a sitter). I only know a significantly smaller number of people who
started with 3e or 4e. Throw in that some are still playing those editions or Pathfinder (and thus less likely to answer WotC surveys), and I can believe that they aren't well-represented.
I don't expect they care. That would be mighty arrogant of me. But they are misrepresenting themselves and I won't let it go unchallenged.
These numbers were from a press summit discussing plans for the current edition. Even if you are right that they somehow "misrepresented" what people are playing, something you have no evidence for, it doesn't matter. We're getting secondhand information about a PR event discussing the current edition. The demographics barely register as a footnote in their overall presentation.
Why would they care if people are playing variants they don't publish or older versions of D&D? How would it have been at all relevant?
As far as I am concerned, we
still do not have any actual statements from WotC (representing anything one way or another). We have one report from a gaming journalist* reporting back what WotC presented. Did WotC indicate that they were discussing 'D&D players' or 5e players (or even just survey respondents)? I suspect that nuance was wiped away by the journalists word choice. I bet the WotC representative at the time was a little more careful in identifying the actual population about which summary statements were made, but if they were a marketing person, they may well have not/gotten it wrong**. Regardless of what they actually said, it was probably obvious from the preceding and subsequent sentences spoken which clearly identified who they were trying to talk about, and we simply don't have access to that.
*who probably had no idea we would be parsing every phrase they used for ammo in an online tempest in a teapot -- and hopefully also wouldn't care
**and I think 'the marketing person wasn't perfectly scientific accurate to the technical definition of words at least somewhat distinct from 'they are misrepresenting themselves,' at least in terms of implied intent (the difference between 'being wrong' and 'lying').
It was a big conference, and they didn't just invite Geekwire. Does anyone have any resources or know any other places we should be looking or other people at those presentations where we could get any clarification?
I'm all for further discussion about the implications of the case if Geekwire communicated perfectly exactly what was stated, I just have near little trust that it is accurate (and near zero trust that we have reason to believe it is). Something wasn't brought through the game of telephone -- the Gen X category was listed as 'Gen X or older,' the population was stated to be 'of respondents' or 'current 5e players' or the like, or similar.