In fact it's the opposite - the reason that 'Enumeratees' and their ilk look slightly unusual is that they are abstractions over general input and output, and a

In fact it's the opposite - the reason that 'Enumeratees' and their ilk look slightly unusual is that they are abstractions over general input and output, and are not specific at all to Play or WebSockets. If you are used to functional programming, Iteratees, Enumerators and Enumeratees are very easy to pick up, and what you end up with is simple building blocks that you can compose together to build powerful systems. I am currently building a system using Play for real-time interaction with a server and the interface is extremely clean.