What is play?

Play - verb - to engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or
practical purpose (Clarendon Press Oxford, 2000)
Playing has always been a big factor in our culture, there are so many
ways that it can apply to our everyday lives, for example we let children
play outside. Play used to be attached mainly to children as its seen as an
activity that children do to learn about the world while being entertained.
However over the years video games have become more popular and has
attached the word play to adults and related to when they are playing
video games.
They are many different ideas that play can be related to, one is that idea
that play and war go hand in hand together. The idea that as long as
humans have existed there has been some kind of fighting, which makes
it one of the most primal forms of play. It can still be seen in todays
society in the young, for example young boys, however the difference
between playing and fighting according to (Huizinga, 1955)is that there
are rules limiting the degree of violence which means that this stops the
play getting too rough and leading to actual injury, which keeps the play
in a safe and controlled environment. This is shown in most war games
today such as Call of Duty which uses war and violence as a type of play;
these games also have rules in play to stop the game becoming unfair to
the player and to stop the play from becoming too life like, which raised
the topic of when does play in video games transfer into real life? Violent
video games have been blamed for people killing an example is in 2013 in
Louisiana an 8 year old boy shot his grandmother after playing Grand
Theft Auto IV. There have been many stories like this all over the world
which does leave a negative on the games industry and leading to the fact
that play in video games can sometimes be transferred into real life.
This leads on to the idea that play is just simulation, as in video games
such as Call of Duty it simulates the idea of a war and even re-creating
past wars to give the users a real simulation of what a war would be like
but it is made is a safe environment as certain rules allow the player to
continue. These rules can include auto regenerating health if a player
hasnt been hit for a certain amount of time used by Grand Theft Auto V,
or collecting health packs to regain a set amount of health. Also one of the
most major rules that affects the game is allowing the player to respawn
which breaks the simulation as this would not happen in real life making it
clear that the game although based on reality is clearly different.

(Poole, 2000) compares the fact that in racing games the cars and courses
were made to be more of a simulation than a pure videogame where as
the actual gameplay mechanics of racing games act like dodgems more
than simulating the actual feeling of properly racing as smashing your car
in to one of your opponents would cost thousands to fix and probably put
you out of that race, but in games they tend to just show the damage on
the car, allowing you to continue racing.
Most games are in a safe environment by having save points at which the
player will respawn if they die. This means that enjoyment is found in
these games as the player does not have to start over the entire game
when the game, which for some users could get very repetitive and
annoying. Most gamers will chose to play in a safe environment, so they
can learn how to beat a part of the game and get a sense of achievement
from overcoming it.
Whereas some games do not have a safe environment, which means that
the user does not progress through the game unless they are very skilled.
Games such as endless runners like temple run and Crossy road are
examples for this as they are endless runners which unless you are very
skilled evolve restarting the game over and over until you get far enough
to progress, which could be things such as a new level or enough coins to
unlock power ups. Some games do also offer a hard-core mode (usually
unlocked after completing the game once) which only gives you one life to
complete the game with; this simulated a risky environment as well as
simulating real life. This may mean that the player will adapt a more
cautious approach to playing, which will change their play style from the
gung-ho approach that players usually have in safe environments.
Another aspect that play can stimulation is emotions, when you play a
video game does the play usually elicits some kind of response be that
anger, or happiness which the game has been carefully crafted to draw
out of you. This can affect the way that you play, if there is anger there is
going to be more aggressive behaviour showed such as button mashing.
In conclusion there are many different ideas as to what play is and how it
is related to and how factors can affect how you play. There are many
different aspects of play including the implications of playing with
violence, what environment to play in, how much of a simulation games
are to real life and the emotions that games get out of people.

References
Clarendon Press Oxford, 2000. Oxford English Dictionary. Third ed. Oxford: s.n.
Huizinga, J., 1955. Homo Ludens. First ed. Boston: The Beacon Press.
Poole, S., 2000. Trigger Happy. First ed. Uk: 4th Estate .