Are there any games (video, not board) that can help me flex my risk tolerance muscle so I'm able to be less "scared" in reality and less risk averse?
Some thoughts on requirements:
- Immediate feedback through a failure state: don't want to spend 90% of the game building and 10% of the time risking what I've built - Less about game proficiency/mechanics and more about provoking an emotional response which I can then confront and work through - Would prefer a controlled, PvE environment so I can remove the variables of exploiters and better players from the equation (though this would be something useful to jolt a plateaued learning curve) - Something that can be done without a sophisticated setup
Here are some games I've thought of and why they won't work (although I may be approaching them wrong):
- Humankind, Civ 6, etc. - Risk occurs late in the game - Feedback isn't immediate and would require analysis - Large amount of build-up - FPS - Requires technical and game proficiency - MMO FPS (Valorant, Overwatch) - Too many uncontrolled variables - Builders, i.e. Rimworld, Factorio, Anno 1800, etc. - More micro-manage-y than risky - Excessive setup before actual risk is faced - Feedback would only occur after analysis
I don't know what I don't know so any ideas/comments are greatly appreciated!
This is an article I found but it's board games: [https://www.creativelive.com/blog/take-more-risks-board-games/](https://www.creativelive.com/blog/take-more-risks-board-games/)
Learning how to play poker is one of the most important skills you can learn in life. It teaches you so many things about life: how to make decisions based on incomplete information and being okay with unfavorable outcomes; knowing how to control your risk and knowing when to push more when the odds are in your favor; learning how to take a bunch of small losses vs less frequent but much larger wins, etc.
Poker really changed my perspective on life and risk management. Being able to fold your hand 80% of the time and seeing those hands going on to win a huge pot, but telling yourself you did the right move because there’s no way you would have known beforehand, is an extremely valuable life skill.
Isn't the winning move not playing, then? I've never seen the appeal. If I lose, I feel the loss of money; but if I win, that's not enjoyable in the same way losing that equivalent would be displeasing.
And either I'm playing with friends, in which case there's no joy in depriving someone else (if I win); or I'm playing with strangers, in which case why would I care about what's going on at the table?
I have a low sensitivity to adrenaline, I need extreme stimuli to feel a "rush" in my stomach.. But like anyone, a good adrenaline rush once in a while is great.. Someone might get that from playing a computer game or watching a horror movie.. or trading stock.. I need to drive a race bike around a track at high speed, or downhill mountainbike or bungee jump or parachute.. When I get back from such a thing, I'm so happy, because I felt "that thing", and then I start reflecting on the risk.. "I'm not doing that again, it went ok this time but what about the next.." months later, I'm planning to do it again, because I do need to feel sometimes sometime.
I'm jealous of people who can get this from watching a horror movie, luxury to have it available, safe in your living room, as much as you want..
You might engage in some risk taking more often to desensitize yourself, even if low risk, but real risk, and it should be risk you actually take, not just simulate.. Just be aware that it's not damaging you too much. I'd not recommend gambling (or stock), because it could devastate you financially.
The real risk of computer games (which I do love) is bad health and obesity.. I don't believe you can become less risk-averse by doing entirely risk-free activities.
Try something like skiing/snowboarding/mountainbiking. These are still relatively safe activities, you have good control over the amount of risk on a per-second basis. Do it often, push your limits.
Yeah, I align with this—I've probably spent a lifetime tuning myself for this.
I present to execs at work frequently and own too many projects for my own good. Peers have asked how I handle the stress..and I don't think I explicitly see or feel it as "stress". I think it's actually that I chase the high of the risk/reward response, and I'm willing to feel the pressure of the "risk" to see something through to the reward.
My second favorite game genre is the management/builder/strategy genre — it's just second because there's not enough of them. I've been playing them all my life, from Civ II on my first PC as a kid, and onward. I think they've kinda trained me for this. These games now feel like a walk in the park, even if I take a weird risk and lose—but as a kid the losses were crushing.
Strategy/4X/Builder/Management games feel like a bit of the same feedback loop, just different nouns and verbs from the day-to-day.
Given the timing of the post is in a period of economic uncertainty, it could be relevant to point out financial advisors are also good at persuading investors not to make big investment mistakes such as selling when the stock market is down.
As well, you can watch the replay to see all the times attacking sooner would have won it.
These kinds of activities are designed to be scary to your monkey / lizard brain, but also to give a consistent payoff in fun and social bonding. I did this for about a week for a buck's trip, and something clicked in my brain associating fear and reward. It lasted for years afterwards; it's been over a decade and I can still feel a shadow of it now. And as you're hoping, the benefits carried over into my professional life.
It makes me think that painful, risky male bonding rituals are almost definitely a feature, not a bug. They turn up in almost all cultures afaik (bullet ant gloves, anyone?). And being able to overcome irrational primate fear is good for everyone including you.
Gameplay is turn-based so you can plan what you want to do calmly, but results are fairly immediate--if you miscalculate a move your soldiers get hurt or die.
You have to take risks: you must move your team of soldiers ahead into the darkness to accomplish a mission, but there could be aliens around the corner waiting to ambush them.
You can take a risk and have a soldier move ahead to grab some loot (meld) which can grant huge bonuses, but it could expose them to danger. You must decide what they will do.
The downside of the XCOM games is you can lose a whole game on a 80% roll, so it might not condition you properly. The game snowballs, so if you get far enough without losing someone, or lose someone too early, you've basically lost Ironman but it doesn't inform you when.
Battle Brothers is of the genre, with similar flaws. Basically the whole "you lose on day 110 because you didn't knife enough mercenaries on day 31".
Xenonauts I think strikes a good balance. You can lose almost everyone and still continue the game. It's more strategic and less tactical, meaning that if you write the correct SOPs and use sufficient explosives, you should win.
XCOM feels a bit like chess sometimes, in that you lose because you didn't examine the map properly or positioned your sniper too far back.
It gives a distorted view on how likely 60% really is since the percentage shown is not the same as the one used to calculate the hit or miss.
The game secretly changes the odds for sequential misses making hits more likely after misses. This teaches the player that the gambler's fallacy is not a fallacy at all.
"Risk tolerance" is a trait you acquire only when you've never known hunger. Only when you've never been faced with homelessness. Only when you've never been so poor that you can't afford to throw something away, less you may one day need it.
When the worst thing that can come of your failure is going home to a supportive and connected family, a hot meal, and a feather pillow to rest your head, of course you'll be "risk tolerant".
I don't think any game can give you this trait. The only way to acquire it is to be born and raised in a house of abundance.
...though at the same time, the threat of destitution could be a great way to really push one to succeed. "Burn the ships", "necessity is the mother of invention", and all that.
I've been hungry. I've been homeless for over a year, both as a child and as an adult. I've been so poor that I can't afford to throw away broken shoes because I couldn't afford to replace them.
But, that was temporary. I'm doing better now, and I have some risk tolerance.
Maybe not as much as someone who didn't experience what I experienced, but still. Tolerance for risk comes from an acceptance of possible outcomes. You can accept an outcome regardless of your personal circumstances, after all, people with lung cancer sneak out of chemotherapy to smoke cigarettes, and people who are about to have their lights turned off still gamble their paychecks away.
No one really wants to go out first because you usually die first, and have the least opportunity to get kills if evenly matched skill-wise with the opponents. It also takes the ability to 'just go' when the time is right (when the smokes are set or when everyone is close enough to go together or when a distraction happens elsewhere) even if you don't feel fully ready - waiting too long means the enemies prepare better.
All of that will put you in situations where you have the obvious choice of waiting around, or leading the way, and though they rarely do it, its usually better for worse players to go out first so its no problem being new to the game and trying that play-style.
CSGO is also a lot about communication, economy management and decision making.
Surviving a round by backing off and saving a gun can win you the next round.
Mindlessly playing will on the other hand guarantee a loss.
It's also about trust and respect. If your team mate doesn't have your back while defusing the bomb, the enemy will kill you both and you lose the round.
There's just so many things to learn from this game.
The community is mostly neutral quality wise. Some people are toxic, but there are also a lot of great players, that behave empowering.
I love CSGO.
Pitch: You play as either: an elite hacker trying to break into the servers of megacorporations for fun and profit, or the inner workings of said megacorporation, trying to defend against the hacker.
The game requires you to take risks because it's a game about information control. You don't know what the corp will do to defend itself until you make a run at their servers, and corps don't know exactly how the runner plans to get in, or what they'll find when they do.
It is free and runs on most platforms.
It will take a lot of time to understand and learn how to control the car and the ball, but once you know that, you can go into ranked or casual 1v1-matches. These are the most nerve-wracking matches to play for most people, since your own mistakes often immediately gives your opponent and opportunity to net a goal. The reason I personally think this game is so awesome and satisfying to play, is how you need to learn and develop yourself in both game sense and game mechanics.
The grind of getting the mechanics is worth it in my opinion, but all in all you also have you enjoy the game.
The 5-minute gameplay in a match of Rocket League, especially in 1v1s, will introduce intense and stressful moments for many players. So observing yourself through both how you react and how you play will learn you a lot. Because everything happens immediately, you need to be aware of how you emotionally react to your own failure in order to play your best game. If you learn wisely from your mistakes, it doesn't matter if you win or loose, because you have a better fundamental understanding for future games. Rinse and repeat! Then understand how the same risk and reward principles that applies in Rocket League can be applied to your own personal risk management.
In general, I learned more about learning, and emotional reactions than I ever imagined I would from a game. And especially a game where the objective is to use your rocket-boost powered car to smash an oversized ball into the goal.
It's Battle Royale esque. All the gear and items you take into a round will be lost if you die. But the only way to acquire more gear is to go into the rounds, loot, kill others for their loot and survive. If you just go into rounds and hide and turtle, you wont find any good gear. You have to be proactive and take risks to loot gear before other players in the round. In EFT, many players have "Gear Fear" where people don't like playing because they can't handle the risk of losing all their gear if they die.
The absolutely random events that occur in Randy Random, seeing your city or town get destroyed by a nuclear fall out while being invaded by a huge gang of raiding mechanics can be soul destroying. Learning your appetite for growth and 'fixing' problems while balancing your ability to survive assaults, famine, blights and democratic fall outs can be very humbling.
Maybe you should try the classic of the horror genre, Dead Space. Or perhaps Doom, which doesn't require much skill, but gives you an adrenaline boost.
I'd also recommend Hotline Miami, but it might be a bit too challenging.
I would like to recommend RPGs or platformers, but they have too many uncertain variables.
For board games I particularly like Diplomacy but it's intensive if played correctly and I've found not everyone is suited to play it.
I can't personally recommend anyone sink that much time into the game though.
