Pretend Playing as a child

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Hello everyone. I have a question regarding the imaginitive playing (Pretend playing). Is it a essential part of an Aspergian childs' brain development, are they good at it? Also I've done a bit of research about this particular topic and the media is mentioning that they cannot Pretend Play.

I did pretend play, mostly when it was about violence as a child.

My pretend play was usually about violence as well.
Or adventure.
I usually pretended to be a soldier, or a dictator, or a pirate, or a spy.
But most of my childhood I pretend played on my own. Looking back, adults (except my parents, who had seen me pretend play at home) thought I couldn't pretend play and that's probably because I didn't know how to pretend play with other children and I could just play chess/cards with them. My elementary school teachers thought I wasn't able to pretend play and maybe it's because of that.
I started to pretend play with other children when I was around 10.

i wasnt very good at pretending to be something else unless it was an animal. i did not like doing that until i was about 13 and i pretended to be a sonic character. but when i was 2 i was good at playing with toys and playing with my sister. but i was good at acting out movies

I remember playing school, house, and drawing a town in the street and riding my bike around pretending it was a car.

I played pretend when I was young.

I used to pretend play a lot and I still do. I was not violent though.

I played house. I played being the mommy and granny. I pretended that the cookies I baked [even the mud ones] were magic. I played that I was a princess and marrying the handsome prince.. I played that I was a nurse in a hospital. I would rescue insects that the ants were fighting with and nursed them back to health. I played that I was a ballet dancer and would dance until my toes bled. I played that I was "Mary Martin as Peter Pan." I played that I lived in a horrible orphanage and that I loved it because I wasn't the only one the bosses were mean to.[ I never wanted anyone to suffer. I just hated feeling so alone] I played that I brought food to "all the starving children in india and China."

I still play house. I still love it. I still love being a mom and granny. I still pretend that there is something magic in anything I bake that makes people feel loved. I love being married to the handsome prince. I still bring home injured animals and nurse them back to health. I don't pretend that I can dance anymore, but I do bump into many things that make my toes bleed. I still think that Captain Hook is pretty hot. I don't make it horrible, but I do love "adopting" others who need a loving family. I don't pretend that I can feed all the hungry in the world, but I do feed the homeless on Lawrence Street and still pretend to myself that it makes a real difference.

So, yeah, I pretended quite a bit as a little girl.

see, i had and continue to have incredibly vivid, detailed daydreams with intricate plots that i've developed over years, but i never was able to "play" anything. i couldn't pretend to be an animal or that my barbies were people who could interact and do things--it simply wasn't real and i couldn't imagine it to be so. i even tried forming an imaginary friend once or twice, since my classmates had them, but i just new it wasn't real and didn't understand how other kids "made believe".

Just the other day I asked about this in another thread, as part of an ongoing effort to find out how many arrows point to me being on the spectrum, and how many point to me not being on it.

I engaged in imaginative play as a child.

So did many of the diagnosed autistics who replied in my thread.

The experts may be failing to take into account the variations possible on the spectrum.

I pretend play in a solitary manner.
Ive never able to interact in roll playing with others.

I used to pretend play Pokemon, Dragonball, and other series with my friend, and pretended be a superhero with a group of girls plus my friend.
I was quite obsessive with pretending play (I was all day thinking about that and extending the imaginary world drawing and writing).

I pretend played a lot, but only if I was in charge. The make-believe games had to "make sense", though.

I did a lot of pretending when I was little.

Some of it really bad (a game about the book "child called it" were we pretended to abuse each other) and others about princesses and good things. But I didn't do a lot of pretending by my self.

i used to walk to school very slowly.
i took in everything i saw and it caused me to fall over.
falling over is not a good thing to do.
whatever.

As little I played animal or - vegetable - or I played doctor with whatever tool-like thing I could find (accessories for Mom´s sewingmachine were superb). No real pretend plays involving others.
Later, when we moved to a small country village, I played "stone-age" with what I could find in the field.
Real pretend plays with others from 6 to 11: "Family", "War wives", "Fine ladies and dangerous dragons" and other girl plays. Only with one or two friends at a time.
As an adult, I have "played" "renaissance" or identity plays like "Today-I-am-french" or whatever nation, - discretely, so nobody would notice

Isn't pretend play essential for child development in general? I think it may just be different for children with autism.