Suburban Democracy Ruined My Save File: A Postmortem of the Worst Focus Group in America

It started the way most of my mistakes start: with a Thursday evening, a half-empty beer, and too much confidence in my neighbors.

I had a free weekend coming up, a backlog I'd been ignoring, and a game I already knew I wanted to play. But for reasons I still can't fully explain — content? boredom? a mild head injury? — I posted a poll in my neighborhood's Facebook group asking what I should play instead.

Within four hours, the poll had 200 comments. Not votes. Comments. My neighborhood does not vote. My neighborhood deliberates.

The Poll That Launched a Thousand Replies

For context: my HOA's Facebook group is the kind of digital town square where a dispute over a stopped-up storm drain can run 400 comments deep and spawn a splinter group called "Drain Truth." These are people who treat a porch light left on overnight as a personal affront. I handed them my hobby like a lamb to the HOA-approved slaughter.

The original poll had four options, all reasonable, all games I actually own. The comments immediately rejected the premise. "Why isn't [my grandson's favorite game] on here?" one neighbor asked, referring to a title released in 2009. Another simply wrote "FARMVILLE" in all caps, twice, as if volume was the missing feature my poll lacked.

By Friday morning, I wasn't a guy picking a game. I was the neighborhood's gaming department. People I had never met were stopping me on the sidewalk. "You're the Nintendo guy, right?" a man walking two golden retrievers asked me. I do not own a Nintendo console. It didn't matter. Democracy had spoken, and democracy had assigned me a brand.

The Handwritten List Incident

I want to be very clear about what happened next, because I still don't fully believe it.

On Saturday, I found a handwritten note slipped under my front door. Actual pen. Actual paper. A numbered list of nine game recommendations, each with a small parenthetical review. Sample entry: "2. Candy Crush (easy to pick up)."

There was no signature. There was no note explaining how this person learned where I live, or that I lived here at all. Just nine games, ranked by someone who apparently believes Candy Crush belongs on a list alongside titles I'd describe as "actual video games."

I have narrowed the suspect pool to four houses, and I've decided not to pursue it, because whoever wrote it gave Candy Crush a five-star review with the annotation "my daughter's favorite," and I refuse to live in a world where that person faces consequences.

The Ranked Verdict Nobody Asked For

Per the site's editorial standards and my own personal need for closure, here is the official ranking of my neighbors' suggestions, from least to most chaotic.

9. Farmville. The game shut down. The neighbor refused to accept this. "There's a new one," she insisted. There is not a new one. There is a new one.

8. Candy Crush. See: the handwritten list. I respect the commitment. I do not respect the genre.

7. "That racing one with the cars." Incredibly, this was not enough information to act on. I spent twenty minutes researching it anyway. Democracy is a scam.

6. Wii Sports. "You can bowl right in your living room," a neighbor explained to me, a person who owns four consoles. I know, Brenda. I know what Wii Sports is. I was there. In 2006. Like you.

5. Words With Friends. A gentleman named Chuck challenged me to a match before I'd even downloaded it. I have now lost eleven consecutive games to Chuck. Chuck is 74. Chuck is ruthless. This placement is purely spite.

4. The game my original poll had as option two. A legitimately fine pick that I simply did not want to play, which is the most neighborhood-Facebook outcome imaginable: technically correct, emotionally wrong.

3. "Whatever your wife wants you to play." My wife wants me to play nothing. She wants me to fix the gutter. This recommendation was a trap and I fell into it. I fixed the gutter.

2. The game I originally wanted to play — but described so inaccurately in the comments that I briefly doubted my own memory of it. "Oh, the one where you're a plumber?" No. He is not a plumber. He has never been a plumber. But now every time I look at the box art, a small voice says plumber, and that voice is from my neighborhood, and it lives in my head rent-free.

1. A game that does not exist. Recommended with total confidence by a man who I'm fairly sure was describing a dream he had. I looked it up. Nothing. I want whatever he's playing.

What I Actually Played

Sunday night, poll closed, list under my belt, gutter fixed, I sat down and played the game I wanted to play in the first place.

It was fine. It was, objectively, better than every single suggestion above. It was also somehow less fun than the week of chaos that preceded it, because somewhere between the handwritten list and Chuck's sixth consecutive victory, my solitary hobby had become a community event, and I couldn't un-hear the peanut gallery in my head.

I've since been invited to "compare libraries" with a neighbor who also games, which I suspect is either a friendship or an ambush. I'll report back. The Nintendo guy always does.