[RESEARCH] The Meaning of Play, Analysing Games

No one really knows the meaning of play because it's not something we should understand. It comes naturally to the human nature, which is why we don't have to learn anything about it. Johan Huizinga wrote a book explaining the meaning of play, 'Nature & Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon', and I will be extracting quotes from there to base my argument upon.

'Animals play, so they must be more then mechanical things.' This quote really explains how animals (and also humans) have souls, and we are not all the same as each other. This would render us as robots, doing the same exact thing as everyone else, droning our way through society as we know it. Which brings me onto another point, one of the other quotes state 'Play is a function of the living.' Does this mean that if you do not play, we are merely objects that cannot function? I'm quite unsure of this comment; people who don't enjoy play are not living? Or is it that if you know the function of play then you know you are living? It could mean many things. I believe it means that play just makes us human/living because of the sheer aspect of it being a 'living' thing to do; we all do it, even if we are serious or don't mean to play.
'All play is a voluntary activity', you don't get ordered to play unless it's a work stated progress. Which brings me onto learning through play. Working is never fun, unless it's something you enjoy doing, then that brings it in as play. However, learning through play is something you will always enjoy, but you are working, learning through these systems. Animals play fight to learn real fighting, children play as certain 'roles' in life to learn about their futures and their aspects in life or even social skills, we even corporate play in learning to ensure that people still stay entertained and learn much faster then writing it into a book. Does this then make play pure? Considering that play fighting animals will then learn how to fight and be vicious when their older? Or children that play to learn roles of life make them make difficult and tragic choices? It's a natural aspect, of course, but believing that it's pure could make the meaning of play go more ways then one. Being violent or tragic couldn't then make play as a fun subject, or be play at all, it becomes real and then it makes people focus on the real world; Play is contained in time. Play is an escape from reality as we know it, it's a release from the grips of unhappiness which life brings at times, we use it to create our own worlds and inhabit them in our own way.