By Manny Vazquez, M.S., LMFT
June 13, 2026
Imagine a place where you can do anything you want to do.
Would you like to play any sport as the G.O.A.T (the Greatest of
All Time)? Would you like to fly? In this place you can. Would you
like to fight and beat the Red Hulk, or Superman, or Batman?
How about all three of them? At the same time?
Say you want to go on a quest to conquer the world? Or you want
to fight in the worst skirmishes in the history of the world? Or,
maybe you want to meet George Washington or Abraham Lincoln
and actually fight alongside them? Do you want to fly in space?
Land on the moon? How about landing on Mars? Are you
perceiving where I am going with this? What if I told you the place
where you can do all this is a real place?
I am talking about the world of video games.
Believe it or not, I have been playing video games since at least
1980, for over 46 years! I remember when video games were very
rudimentary. The first video game I played was Pong. Who here
remembers Pong? Basically, it was a video game version of
tennis. It was a basic premise, but the game was very hard to
control and play, I remember.
In 1984, video games had really started to take off. Some of my
favorites included Pac-Man, Galaxian, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and
many others. My friends and I would spend hours at 7-Eleven or
at Bowling Alleys or at Arcades, playing video games for hours.
Sometimes, we would get in trouble for coming home late after
playing video games for hours.
All video games at 7-Eleven or in the arcades were 25 cents to
play. For $1, I could play for a long time because I was fairly good
at most of my favorites. It was cheap entertainment, and as with
anything good that mankind invents, too much of a that thing can
be harmful.
In 1984, I became the sports editor of my junior high school
newspaper, and I would write articles for all the different pages
because our teacher wanted us to have a well-rounded
experience in writing.
That year, in that class, I wrote an opinion piece that asserted that
video games were acting like a new drug for some of my peers.
Some kids, I wrote, were doing all sorts of things to get money to
play video games. Believe it or not, one of my friends stole a lot of
money from his Dad so that we could play video games. And
many of my peers did many other things like that to be able to
play video games.
For many men and women today, video games continue to be a
problem. Some people never grew up and spend hours in their
Parents’ basement on their video game consoles, acting like
adolescents. The worst story I ever heard happened in Japan, at
an Internet cafe, where a young man passed away in front of the
computer where he was playing video games because he didn’t
eat or drink anything for days.
Yes, video game addiction is a real thing. I’ve had young clients
for whom video games seem like a terrible obsession. They would
do anything to play, and I mean, anything. And I’ve had Parents
take away all electronics from their children, which is a bad idea.
From what I know about addicts, you can’t just suddenly take
away the object of their addiction. What you will do is create a
raging monster, and I’ve seen this happen with many young
people who are addicted to video games or addicted to anything,
really.
Video game addiction is very hard to understand by someone
who has never had a video game addiction, or really, who has
never had any other type of addiction. To many people, a video
game addiction seems silly.
People who are well often do not understand those who aren’t
well. And perhaps that is the bigger problem that we have, that
people with addictions (video games, drugs, alcohol) are often
dismissed, their problems minimized by those who do not see the
addictions and problems in their own lives.
In my 24 years of counseling experience, I have learned how to
resolve any addiction, even video games. I’ll give you an
example, and this is not magic, by the way. Hypothetically
speaking, say you smoke 20 cigarettes a day; as your therapist, I
would say try smoking 19 for a while. Eventually, go down to 18,
then 17, then 16, you get the picture. Depending on how long you
decide to do this, eventually, you will be down to one cigarette a
day, and eventually, you will stop smoking cigarettes. What you
just did was wean yourself off cigarettes. I actually helped
someone stop smoking in three days. True story.
The thing is that when you are ridding yourself of a bad habit like
smoking or even video games, you have to replace that bad habit
with something positive. For example, in the case of video games,
I tell Parents, as you help your child cut down on video games,
buy board games that he or she can play with you and the family.
Enroll them in a club or a fun class, like photography or drawing.
Take them out to Starbucks or other fun places. Do stuff with them
so that video games lose their allure. In other words, replace the
video games in their lives with something positive, if you indeed
believe that video games are harmful.
I do believe, however, that video games can be a positive thing,
too. On my PS5 console at home, I have baseball, soccer, some
puzzle games that I play with my Wife Laura, football, and yes, all
the old classics that I played when I was a kid. The thing is, I am
not a video game addict. I can take it or leave playing video
games. They do not interfere in my life. I would much rather do
fun things with my loved ones than play video games. Almost
anything can be a healthy outlet. But taken to extremes, even the
most fun things can become addictions.
Oh, by the way, the title of this blog, Mad Skills, is actually a
tribute to one of my favorite video games. I wanted to name this
blog, Madden Skills, after my favorite football video game, but
then you would have known what I was talking about at the
outset, and my statement to you regarding the addiction to video
games would not have surprised you at all.