In the case of video games, the game world is constructed in the highly structured use of multimedia and multimodality, involving the verbal and the non-verbal. Furthermore, some games may also involve an additional tactile sensory channel via the game interface. The player’s action may prompt the game system to give haptic (tactile) responses, such as a jolt on the controller (technically called "force-feedback") to physically convey the consequence of the action taken by the player in the game, forming part of each individual player's own ludonarrative. More recent game-player interface design concepts such as Kinect even allow the player to use his/her own body to interact with the game, going beyond motion-sensitive controllers such as Wii remote and Move. All of these elements come together to make up the gameplay experience of the player and, as a package, they ideally need to be transferred across to a new locale through game localization. In order to recreate a gameplay experience that is equivalent to that provided by the original, game localization operates at all levels from linguistic manipulations at the micro level to the macro level of the product as a whole, retaining not only functionality but also the intended affective appeal to the end users. In this way, game localization needs to work in a broad framework so as to recreate and relocate the original game experience in the target culture and in a given target player setting in both a technical and a socio-cultural context. In the localization industry this is simply described as retaining a similar "look and feel" of equivalent, locally available products (Fry 2003). To achieve this goal some major game companies such as Square Enix are pushing the boundaries of translation by constantly defying conventions and developing innovative forms of linguistic and cultural mediation most suitable for and afforded by modern games as cultural and technological artefacts.

A broad localization framework entails a transformation involving explicit multi-faceted changes beyond the verbal textual manipulations which have been well discussed in Translation Studies. Game localization introduces manipulations that are not fully explored by mainstream translation theories today other than those generally considered under the concept of "adaptation" As discussed earlier in the context of Translation Studies, the notion of adaptation leaves room for clarification, despite its recent recognition in a more positive light. By comparison, transcreation is less encumbered and is, rather, imbued with a sense of defiance and, most of all, translator's agency, given its historical heritage. As such, it removes the preconceived authority of the original and allows room for another original to be created. As we have seen, some of the extreme cases of game localization could involve all kinds of transformative operations, such as changes to the visual imagery, recreating game properties, including names of weapons and designs of characters, as well as adjustments to elements of the game design, gameplay difficulty levels or other game mechanics. Primarily "video games are changed in any number of ways for distribution in different regional markets" (Corliss 2007). The scope of transformation which game localization allows is such that the practice can even fit the extreme metaphor of a blood transfusion, as in de Campos's conceptualization of transcreation, where "the anthropophagic, transcreative use of the original in order to 'nourish' new work in the TL breaks the notion of faithfulness to the original text as a necessary criterion of translation" (Munday 2009, 8). Given the rather broad and vague meaning attached to adaptation, we believe that the concept of“transcreation better represents the deliberate transformative approaches which are present in game localization, operating at multiple levels and in multimodality to recreate the whole gameplay experience in a new target-user setting.

Turning the argument around, we insist that video games must sometimes be transcreated to retain the same affective appeal of the original game to the end player through multiple sensory channels, incorporating verbal and non-verbal stimuli while taking into consideration several imposed constraints. The overall skopos of translation of the product geared to entertain the end user permits varying degrees of customization which may affect: (1) nonverbal visual signs (character design, background scene, lighting, costume, props, etc.); (2) verbal visual signs (text in graphics, dialogue in written form; UI items, etc.); (3) non-verbal acoustic signs (music, sound effects, etc.); (4) verbal acoustic signs (voiced dialogues, song lyrics, etc.), and (5) kinetic feedback loops with the system responding to the player’s input. In an effort to depict the increasing blurring of the borders of AVT, Zabalbeascoa (2008, 29) provides a detailed schema to map AVT texts according to a cline between verbal and nonverbal codes on the one hand, and visual and audio channels, on the other, allowing new AVT products to be accommodated in relation to these double axes. The scope for transcreation applied in game localization can further involve the kinetic dimension gradually extending to the whole human body as system interface. In this way, games as something constructed on a technological platform as software and designed for entertainment, seem to present the most malleable of texts and a type of content that permits almost limitless customization, in turn calling for new concepts required to accommodate such transformations.

These considerations support the characteristic of the medium of digital games as providing an unprecedented breadth of scope for the translator's creativity to be exercised, as is reflected in the term "transcreation". Modern digital interactive entertainment generates a narrative space which provides an exploratory and kinetic play area accommodating individual ludonarrative, where each player is prompted to use sensory channels other than those most traditionally linked to the function of translation as in verbal visual and verbal acoustic signs. It is in the context of these expanded spheres that the concept of “transcreation" can be placed. Here indeed, something so fundamental yet often forgotten about translation which is articulated by Robinson (2003, 142) applies most aptly: "translators don't translate words; they translate what people do with words". Translators need to unpack the play experience potential in the game for a new set of players with different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds. Transcreation at times poses a greater risk, as we have seen, because of its extended scope of modification, while the other side of the coin is that translation that is too timid and ST-driven is more likely to fail to convey the excitement and the sense of fun packed in the source/original content. These new dimensions of translating games, which we now call "transcreation", are gradually seeping into game translators' consciousness and are contributing to the formation of professional norms. 

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