From masterbrand to multiplayer

Qiddiya already had a powerful masterbrand built around the Power of Play. Our challenge was to make it resonate with a much more specific audience without losing what made it Qiddiya. Gaming isn’t one culture: fantasy, cyberpunk, FPS and esports each have their own visual codes, language and communities. We needed to create a system that could flex between them, giving every world a distinct voice while keeping Qiddiya Gaming as the thread connecting them. The resulting architecture allowed individual IP to take centre stage while remaining clearly connected back to Qiddiya Gaming.

We adapted the existing Qiddiya toolkit for gaming, then created a series of individual IP worlds through naming, lore, narrative, visual identity and visual language. Rather than marketing a future district through masterplans and renders, the idea was to reveal it as gamers would expect a major title to be released, world by world, story by story, experience by experience. The strategy was designed around unlocking lore, characters and IP piece by piece, building anticipation over time. Those worlds then went global. The first major roadshow activation took The Temple of Lost Souls to Gamescom LATAM in São Paulo, brought to life by 3C Gaming through the a giant monument’s fallen head, a gold-plated relic, hugely popular claw machines and influencer moments built around gaming community culture. Then MAS delivered the next three; at Gamescom Cologne, we created a High Fantasy world that came alive through MEK Fortress; at Tokyo Game Show, UBAR gave Qiddiya a cyberpunk makeover; and at G-STAR Korea, Outpost Omega became an IRL FPS experience, supported by a bespoke hand-drawn illustration style created specifically for the activation. The wider rollout deliberately used different genre codes and mechanics to introduce each world to gaming audiences.

The programme allowed audiences to begin experiencing Qiddiya City’s Gaming & Esports District years before they could physically visit it. Working with Qiddiya’s wider agency roster and some of the world’s leading experiential teams, the brands became interactive and playable experiences across major global gaming events, building recognition, engagement and anticipation within the communities the district is being created for. The wider 2024 experiential programme generated 44 million social impressions, engaged more than 53,000 guests and MAS won a Gold Drum Award for Best Use of Gaming. In 2025, the system evolved again as BRASH brought Qiddiya’s masterbrand directly into esports culture at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh. One brand. Many worlds. Built to play.