Between Pleasure and Harm: Transcreating a Serious Game on Older Adult Mistreatment with Indigenous Communities

This paper examines how play can support engagement with older adult mistreatment, using the adaptation of a serious game called La valise de Lise for Cree and Inuit communities. The original game asks players to open a locked suitcase and assemble the fragments of a fictional older woman's life, gradually recognizing subtle, relational harm within her family. The authors argue that standard translation and localization are inadequate for this material, because the signs of mistreatment, concepts of kinship and care, and histories of colonial violence vary across cultures. Instead, they propose transcreation, a more expansive re-authoring process that preserves the game's emotional and interpretive force while reworking story arcs, objects, puzzles, and tone.

The adapted versions, Jane's Journey and Mary's Message, were developed through slow, collaborative work with local community members and artists. The authors contend that transcreation serves three functions: it preserves the game's procedural structure of inquiry rather than its literal plot, it creates ethical resonance with the intended players without imposing external moral expectations, and it manages the tension between playfulness and seriousness. Playful elements are retained not to lighten the subject but to create enough emotional distance for participants to approach difficult material at a manageable pace.

The paper's scope is primarily conceptual and case-based, drawing on a single game and two Indigenous community adaptations rather than systematic empirical data. It situates its arguments within critical gerontology, serious games scholarship, and Indigenous game studies, and it frames transcreation as an ethical method for designing serious games that remain culturally grounded and sensitive across diverse contexts.