From Riyadh to Gamescom: Inside MBC's First Major Video Game

From Riyadh, one of the Middle East's largest media companies is making a move into an industry it has historically watched from the other side of the screen.

MBC Group unveiled MBC Game Studio in August 2026 alongside its first project, '1001 Threads of Mizan', an Arabian fantasy action-adventure for PC and consoles. The studio describes itself as a global developer and publisher with roots in Riyadh and London, backed by MBC Group and staffed by international game development talent.

Its ambitions extend beyond a single release. MBC Game Studio says it is building a portfolio encompassing original first-party games as well as third-party titles, positioning game development as a new branch of MBC's wider entertainment business.

Its first test is a large one.

Unveiled at Gamescom in Cologne, '1001 Threads of Mizan' is being developed for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. It supports solo play as well as drop-in, drop-out co-op for up to three players, combining third-person combat with aerial traversal across an original fantasy world inspired by 'One Thousand and One Nights' and Arabian folklore.

Unlike many early announcements for ambitious games, there is already something tangible to examine. MBC brought a playable pre-alpha build to Gamescom, where journalists were able to play portions of the game and test its combat, co-op and flying-carpet mechanics.

Three Heroes Against the Jinn

'1001 Threads of Mizan' follows three heroes - Yusra, Malik and Sufyan - summoned by Shahrazad as an ancient jinn threatens the world.

Each character occupies a different combat role. Yusra specialises in ranged combat using a magical longbow, while Malik is a heavier close-range fighter. Sufyan provides a faster melee option, wielding a sword capable of extending into a whip-like weapon.

The distinctions are particularly important in co-op, where all three characters can fight together. Combat uses familiar third-person action fundamentals including light and heavy attacks, charged abilities and parrying, while encounters move between conventional ground combat and the game's more unusual aerial systems.

The world itself draws from Arabian storytelling rather than adapting a particular 'One Thousand and One Nights' tale. Shahrazad, jinn and flying carpets are familiar elements, but MBC Game Studio is using them to construct an original setting and story.

The Flying Carpet Is More Than Transportation

The flying carpet is one of 'Mizan's' defining mechanics, and the Gamescom build demonstrated that it is integrated into combat rather than reserved for travelling between locations.

Players can summon their carpets during encounters and transition between fighting on foot and flying through the environment. While airborne, they can boost, evade attacks and engage enemies, with some of the game's enormous jinn designed around the additional freedom of movement.

Gamescom previews highlighted this most clearly during large boss encounters. Nintendo World Report described the transition to carpet flight as dramatically changing how combat works, particularly when confronting attacks that would be difficult to avoid while remaining on the ground.

Other hands-on reports described using carpets to reach boss weak points and reposition during combat. The result is a traversal mechanic that also functions as part of the player's offensive and defensive toolkit.

The approach allows MBC Game Studio to build encounters at a substantially different scale from the human-sized combat surrounding them. Foot combat can take place against conventional groups of enemies before players mount their carpets to confront creatures towering over the environment.

Designing a Co-op Action Adventure

MBC Game Studio is also attempting to bring cooperative play into a format more commonly associated with single-player action adventures.

The entire game can be played alone, but up to three players can enter or leave through drop-in, drop-out multiplayer. Rather than simply increasing enemy health when more people join, demonstrations of the game suggest that individual encounter mechanics can also change.

The Gamescom build offered an example during a boss sequence involving multiple vulnerable eyes. Hands-on reporting described the solo version as giving the player a longer window to attack them while retaining progress between attempts. With additional players, the time available became shorter and failure could reset the objective.

It is a small example from an unfinished build, but one that shows the problem MBC Game Studio is trying to solve: encounters have to remain functional for one player while demanding coordination when two more arrive.

Early impressions have also identified areas still requiring refinement. Gamescom previews generally responded positively to the carpet controls and the scale of the boss encounters, while some found conventional ground combat comparatively straightforward. Others reported that dodging could feel unresponsive or that three-player combat occasionally became difficult to read.

The build shown in Cologne was explicitly pre-alpha, leaving those systems subject to substantial change before release.

Building the Technology Behind 'Mizan'

The scale of the project is also visible in some of the development work taking place behind the scenes.

Public portfolio material from members of the development team describes work involving procedural biome generation, vegetation shaders, character optimisation and tools for constructing the game's environments. Technical art director Alex Remotti has detailed the use of technologies including Unreal Engine's Nanite alongside C++ and compute-shader tools for world building.

Procedural tools can be particularly useful for games attempting to construct large environments without requiring artists to manually place every element. They do not necessarily mean that the resulting world itself is procedurally generated; instead, they can allow developers to generate and iterate on terrain, vegetation and other environmental components before artists refine the finished spaces.

The studio has recruited developers with previous experience at companies including BioWare, Bungie and Ubisoft Montréal. Creative director Lars Bonde previously worked on franchises including 'Prince of Persia' and 'Watch Dogs'.

That international composition also makes MBC Game Studio more complicated than a conventional locally staffed Riyadh developer. The company describes its team as global, with roots in Riyadh and London, while developers working on 'Mizan' are distributed internationally.

From Regional Investment to Regional Development

Saudi Arabia has become one of the world's most prominent sources of capital in gaming, with investments spanning publishers, esports, intellectual property and stakes in major international game companies. Building games through a studio rooted in the Kingdom represents a different part of that strategy.

MBC Game Studio is not presenting '1001 Threads of Mizan' as a one-off media tie-in. It is establishing itself as both developer and publisher, with plans for first- and third-party games beyond its debut project.

'Mizan' therefore provides an early indication of what that operation intends to build: an original IP rather than an adaptation of an existing MBC property, designed for the major current console platforms and PC, assembled by an international development team and built around Arabian fantasy rather than importing an established Western or Japanese franchise.

There is still plenty that is unknown. MBC has not announced a release date or publicly disclosed the game's development budget, making labels such as AAA difficult to quantify. The game journalists played at Gamescom was also a pre-alpha slice rather than a finished product. But it was playable. For a regional games industry frequently discussed through investment announcements, acquisitions and future development plans, that makes '1001 Threads of Mizan' a particularly concrete project to watch. MBC Game Studio has moved beyond announcing an intention to make major games: its first one has already been placed in players' hands.