by play you're not referring to the ability to shift up and down by pushng forward and pulling back are you ?
i.e. like the paddles you CAN change gear using the shifter when in D mode, i.e. it WILL have play to allow you to do this, I sometime whack it accross to DS and accidently trigger a gear change too, which CAN be annoying, but it's suppossed to do this.
(someone did tell you this before right ?!
)