I guess I woudn't modify.
There are no components around the game port connector and I mumble just to think about how small they are.

Plus it seems like nobody has ever done such a mod before, or at least never posted about it.

My main motivation is just something I've mentioned before: I have an Interact Hammerhead FX which I would like to bring back into active use, but a Gameport-to-USB adapter might not work (this thing's drivers were known to be iffy) but as mentioned, my Audigy 2 doesn't have a joystick port.

It's not the end of the world as I can still use USB controllers (in fact I usually just use a device to plug Playstation controllers into USB) but it sucks for the Hammerhead FX, as its actually a solid controller but I just have no way to use it.

Isn't easier/cheaper just buy SB Live!, which has integrated Gameport?

Only OEM Audigy 2 cards don't have that connector. Easier to buy one for cheap locally.

I bought two Audigy 2 ZS cards last year, partly because I wanted that joystick port on a modern machine. One of them was a well kept retail card that came with all the discs and accessories, including the bracket. The other was just a bare card, but it still had all the same connectors populated on the PCB.
I noticed that most of these cards on eBay have the bracket missing.

I started with the bare card. Turned out the joystick port did not work on that card. I had everything set up but the joystick always showed as "not connected" in the WinXP control panel. As soon as I swapped the cards, using the same bracket, then it worked.
I hope dead joystick ports aren't common on these cards. Maybe somebody hot plugged it.

The legacy joystick port (and the sound) makes these cards pretty nice for an XP machine. Personally I don't have any *good* analog USB joysticks, my best analog joysticks are the 15-pin gameport type.

I tried a Gameport->USB adapter in the past, but it had terrible resolution which ruins the value of a good joystick. From what I've read, most of them have that problem. Maybe with a thumbstick controller it would be acceptable, but I'd try to avoid that solution.

Well, for my purposes, the issue seems to have been rendered moot...

See I discovered unofficial USB drivers for Win98. I tried using these with a SNES controller (via adapter) to play the Sonic & Knuckles Collection. For some reason the controller wigged out during the game, which I thought was due to it being a USB controller, but then I tried with a Playstation 1 controller instead (via a different adapter) and the game liked it just fine.

So it seems I really don't need a classic gameport, USB controllers work fine in Windows, and if I want it for a DOS game I could just use Dosbox (Audigies don't really do DOS compatibility anyway. And yes, I tried the unofficial drivers for that. They didn't work).

I'm not sure if it has already been mentioned - I believe only the Audigy 2 ZS had the option of a gameport bracket.
I'm also aware that there is a modified driver which enables this gameport in Windows 98 (and MS-DOS support), but the 2 ZS only has WDM drivers usually.
I'm not all that familiar but from what I understand the chip in the Audigy 2 Value does not have the complete functionality needed.
This was also the very last Creative card to offer a gameport.