// KOTAKU — GAMING
The 1001 Threads Of Mizan Director Avoids Answering A Simple Question At Gamescom
Previewing 1001 Threads of Mizan at Gamescom 2026 was bizarre. It is not totally uncommon to attend a preview at a conference not knowing what you are getting into. To protect from leaks, sometimes you’ll get invites for appointments mysteriously titled something like “Brand New Studio and Game Preview Opportunity – Gamescom 2026.” The general practice in this case is to ask for some details so you know what you’re getting into and, if you’re a freelancer, if you can get commissioned to cover it.
In the case of one appointment this year, when I inquired as to what the mystery game on offer could be, I was told, “We think this game is going to be heavily talked about following its unveil on [Opening Night Live] but you’ll have to take our word for it. Due to concern over leaks, it’s hard to say much more. We realize it’s difficult to book blind but what I can say is that it’s a big budget, three player co-op action-adventure game made by vets from various top tier western developers. They’ve been in stealth for a few years working on this and it’s going to make a big splash at Gamescom on the show floor.”
Despite that general vagueness, sometimes you take the gamble; after all, who knows, this might very well be the next big thing. Color me surprised when, during Opening Night Live, 1001 Threads of Mizan—a game based on One Thousand and One Nights, or as it’s more commonly known in the West, “Arabian Nights”—was announced, and I noticed this post from prolific industry analyst Daniel Ahmed highlighting that it had been developed by a Saudi Arabian game studio.
For those unfamiliar, as part of Saudi Vision 2030, the Saudi government, and in turn Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have been investing greatly in diversifying the country’s economy to be less dependent on its finite oil supply. Some of this takes the form of sportswashing—using teams like Newcastle United and companies like WWE and UFC to lobby for the image of a country with a rather horrendous history of abusing the human rights of those living inside its borders.
Video games are no stranger to this, with famed arcade company SNK being bought out by Misk (also known as the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation) in 2022, while just last month a consortium of PIF (the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund), Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners completed a leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts for $55 billion. These huge buyouts aren’t just designed to diversify the economy of Saudi Arabia, but often to push the morals and culture of the country, where queer relations are punishable by death; see the inclusion of the Crown Prince’s favorite footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, and his favorite DJ, Salvatore Ganacci, in the lethally uncool Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
All that is to say that 1001 Threads of Mizan is as close to an in-house effort at triple-A game development as we have seen from Saudi Arabia, being developed by a new studio called MBC Game Studio. MBC Group is the current name of the former Middle East Broadcast Center, which is 54-percent owned by PIF following a high-profile case in which the Saudi government summoned and arrested several of the previous owners in Riyadh on corruption charges, including the current Chairman and 36-percent owner, Waleed bin Ibrahim (who was found innocent of all charges following an 83-day incarceration).
While highlighting different cultures in video games is a noble goal, it should be noted in no uncertain terms that this game is being developed by a studio being funded and run by the Public Investment Fund. PIF is an organization whose chairman is Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was critical of the Crown Prince, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where his body was dismembered and disposed of in a suitcase.
I toyed with the idea of cancelling my appointment after receiving an email from PR confirming this was indeed the unnamed game I had signed up to