The other day I downloaded this free game called “Market Crashers” on the Nintendo 3DS which as the name kind of implies deals with stock trading. Essentially, you have to guess with the help of game characters to determine when you should buy and sell stock in a company in a semi quick fashion. This was hilarious as with my first try I made a tens of thousands of dollars. In my next try I actually lost money. I never actually done stock trading for real but I would have to imagine to a certain extent the research and guessing game you play is kind of similar.
This game made me think how it can be really useful to find safe ways to take risks in life in order to help you build the confidence to do things in the real world. Normally that is what school is for of course in many ways. However, being say an entrepreneur isn’t exactly part of a standardized curriculum. So many times we often graduate with the fear to jump out and take risks as we are only used to do things safely with what we know.
I bet if I played more games like this as a child I would have probably been more inclined to try stock trading in real life. But of course the thought of using real money where I could lose tens of thousands in an instant to train myself on how to “play the game” seems a little unwise. Though this did kind of sparked my interest to use say “entertainment” funds on like stock investing instead.