The Kingdom of play: pixels of power in a new age of influence 
Diplomacy does not live in embassies anymore. Instead, it lives inside algorithms. To the average listener, it might have sounded as though a bottom-line business story was unfolding when the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund bought Electronic Arts for $55 billion. But this is not just another investment, it is a strategic move into the very heart of the world’s imagination. Power today is not in barrels or borders, but in pixels, data, and the emotions that move through them.
The global gaming industry is already worth more than $250 billion, more than film and music put together, and is projected to top $500 billion by 2030, according to PwC. Over 3 billion people (almost half the globe’s population) play video games. Millions of players around the world are creating, competing and building in artificially intelligent digital worlds every second.
EA’s flagship franchise, “EA Sports FC,” formerly “FIFA,” has more than 150 million players. True, playing with each algorithmic tweak does not just entertain, it teaches cooperation, patience, and emotion. This is how games have quietly become the most powerful classrooms on Earth.
Saudi Arabia also recognizes this dynamic and is trying to fit itself into it. The Kingdom, via the PIF, has promised 38 billion reasons through Savvy Games Group to position itself as a global gaming and esports hub. Its notable investments include Nintendo, Capcom and Take-Two Interactive amongst others, and they operate the world’s largest electronic sports festival in Gamers8, which has awarded over $45 million in prizes. These are not random investments; they are the building blocks of a new form of diplomacy, one that travels not through cables or embassies but through narrative arcs and AI engines.
The most precious resource in the brave new world is attention. And those able to turn imagination into connection will be the ones writing our global story
Let us use one of EA’s most iconic games, “The Sims.” For over two decades, players from all across the world have whittled away lives beneath those floating green diamonds, constructing homes, raising families and creating worlds that reflect their aspirations. Now, imagine a future iteration: “The Sims: Middle East Edition.” A teenager in Los Angeles or London opens the game and, before he knows it, is designing a modernist villa in Jeddah adorned with traditional Najdi patterns or running a virtual cafe in AlUla filled with visitors from around the world. As he plays, and through experience, he learns about a culture, a region that had previously been abstract. He is having a fun time, but he is also ingesting values, symbols and stories that broaden his horizons. That is soft power redefined.
The poetry in the name Electronic Arts suddenly seems prophetic. That is the new frontier, where creativity meets computation, where culture is coded, and where imagination becomes infrastructure. The Middle East fueled the world for decades with energy; now it is starting to fuel the world with narrative. AI is the accelerant. Whoever constructs these digital realms is not merely providing entertainment, they are influencing how billions of minds think about the nature of reality.
As traditional powers haggle over trade and treaties, the Gulf is quietly constructing the emotional architecture of tomorrow: studios, AI labs and cultural ecosystems where design merges with diplomacy. From NEOM’s metaverse ambitions to regional investments in storytelling and game design a new map of influence is taking shape, not geopolitical but psychocultural.
The most precious resource in the brave new world is attention. And those able to turn imagination into connection will be the ones writing our global story. From a business perspective, the PIF buying EA makes sense but it is actually quite visionary.
Because in this century, the most powerful nations will not be those that defend their borders. They will be the ones that design the worlds beyond them.
• Ignacio de Medina is a strategist, businessman and consultant with a rich background in international relations, private diplomacy business expansion, particularly in the Middle East. He is a specialist in the entertainment sector and the author of the book “Unlocking Saudi: Cross-cultural Guide & Negotiation Strategies for Business Success in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
