Since so much of this data is derived from the ’99 Segmentation Study, it is important that the reader understand how this data was gathered.

For the purpose of the 1999 study, the following methodology was employed:

A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this document, this group is referred to as “the marketplace” or “the market”, or “the consumers”.

This age bracket was arbitrarily chosen on the basis of internal analysis regarding the probable target customers for the company’s products. We know for certain that there are lots of gamers older than 35, especially for games like Dungeons & Dragons; however, we wanted to keep the study to a manageable size and profile. Perhaps in a few years a more detailed study will be done of the entire population.

Information from more than 65,000 people was gathered from a questionnaire sent to more than 20,000 households via a post card survey. This survey was used as a “screener” to create a general profile of the game playing population in the target age range, for the purposes of extrapolating trends to the general population.

This "screener" accurately represents the US population as a whole; it is a snapshot of the entire nation and is used to extrapolate trends from more focused surveys to the larger market.

A follow up survey was completed by about a thousand respondents from the “screener”. The follow up survey is an extensive document with more than 100 questions. The particular individuals chosen to participate in this expanded survey represent the population, as determined by the screener. In other words, the small detailed survey group can be reasonably extrapolated to the larger screener group, and the larger screener group can be logically extrapolated to the public in general. This is a common, standard, and accepted methodology within the market research field.

The data from the detailed survey was collated and prepared by the Wizards market Research Department, in conjunction with an external consulting firm. We believe that the data is a fair and accurate representation of the hobby game consumer profile and that it does statistically correlate with the population as a whole in the US for the target age bracket.