What is the point of games?

We live on the California coast. We are surrounded by hippies and unschoolers who use games to (essentially) trick their children into learning. Some abhor curricula and believe that games and life experience will provide their children's foundational skills.

I'm not an unschooler. I'm constantly shocked by the things my children learn on their own, but direct instruction is at the heart of our homeschool (and life). From things like, "We say please if we want someone to do something for us," to "You must apologize to your sister if you cause her harm," to "G may say /j/ when followed by E, I, or Y," we utilize direct instruction all the time.

So I find myself asking myself why I play games with my children. Of course we love math games for reinforcing skills, but games are more fundamental to our school than that. We play math games that cover skills we've never learned and we play physics games that demonstrate ideas that I remember from college. Why?

It's fun, of course, but there's more than that. By playing games, my children are gently introduced to concepts before they are taught them. When I teach the concepts, they come much more naturally because they have become intuitive. They will think these subjects are easy and consider themselves good at them, and will be more likely to like them.

Of course, any subject worth studying eventually becomes hard. But hopefully curiosity and adventure will take over by then.