Three characteristics of play can be stressed: it is a voluntary activity, it is separate from real life, and it is fun. Play is a voluntary activity characterized by minimal rules, spontaneity and fantasy, and is viewed by participants as non-work.
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Three characteristics of play can be stressed: it is a voluntary activity, it is separate from real life, and it is fun. Play is a voluntary activity characterized by minimal rules, spontaneity and fantasy, and is viewed by participants as non-work.
In humans, play is any non-utilitarian activity pursued for its own sake. Meanings for the word 'play' abound and are very broad-ranging. Play is often used to refer to a wide variety of activities engaged in voluntarily, and includes such things as games, sports, creative activities, and make-believe.
One of the most influential books on play is Homo Ludens (Man the Player), in which he examines play as a cultural phenomenon, noting that it is an irrational, voluntary activity, characterized by freedom. To Huizinga, play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary' life as being 'not serious', but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space. Huizinga states that the function of play can be derived from the two basic aspects under which we meet it: as a contest for something or as a representation of something. These two functions can unite in such a way that the game 'represents' a contest, or else becomes a contest for the best representation of something.
However, the most important meaning of play is that we recognize a concept which is play does not be separated from human beings ordinary lives. In this sense, play can be essential value in living life.