| Summary: | With almost two billion video game fans worldwide (Statista 2014) from the casual to the professional player, the localisation of video games has become a clear business decision for publishers because it determines not only the entrance but also the permanence of their brand in each country. In this sense, video games can offer as much of an aesthetic and informative experience as cinema and TV creations. In fact, professional gaming has already become a spectator sport like basketball or football, and there are fully-dedicated e-sports channels—such as TwitchTV—that are gaining viewers in the millions across the world. Unfortunately, game localisation remains a largely misunderstood and mismanaged process (Chandler & Deming 2012; O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013; Bernal-Merino 2015) endangering the felicitous semiosis created by designers for their compatriots. Semiotics and pragmatics can help Translation Studies and the translation industry to shift from the literalist word-focused approach—resurrected by Computer Assisted Translation Tools (CATTs)—into a polysemiotic, communication-focused process. It would not only yield better results, but help companies recognise the weakness in their processes and implement a polysemiotic one in order to give translators and editors the information and early game access to retell that game in another language and for another culture. This article explores the meaning-making capabilities of multimedia interactive entertainment software paying attention to all the game peripherals available to date under semiotic and pragmatic viewpoints. Furthermore, it reflects on the impact on playability of the localisation of such complex mass entertainment products in order to export them to foreign countries where they will be enjoyed, or not, by players with different cultures and languages.
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