Ask HN: Games which will help increase my appetite for risk?

I'm very risk averse IRL and am prone to "turtle" or "hoard" what I have. This mindset does NOT help me with my investments where a certain tolerance for risk is necessary to get reward.

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/)

XCOM and XCOM2 in Ironman mode (only one autosaved game--all choices are permanent) are excellent choices to learn how to deal with risk.

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.

Poker with real money. Playing poker with fake money is utterly worthless. There needs to be real money behind your decision making but I promise it is eye opening.

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.

Try Starcraft 2. Games are under 20 minutes and you need to fully commit aggressively to win a lot. Constant attack / harassment / probing or risky expansions(or both).

As well, you can watch the replay to see all the times attacking sooner would have won it.

Greetings! A very controversial, but damn interesting topic.

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.