ExperienceCyberHero x Riyadh: First Global Stop
CyberHero brought humanoid robot combat to Riyadh on September 9, and MDLBEAST Radio was on the ground for it. Hero Esports co-founder and CEO Danny Tang told us why the Kingdom got it before anywhere else.
Watch the videoThere is a version of this story that is only about the machines, and it would still be a good story. Ten EngineAI T800 humanoids, 1.73 meters tall and up to 85 kilos each, 29 articulated joints apiece, walking into a purpose-built arena at Boulevard City to throw punches and kicks at one another for two hours with a DJ playing over the top of it.
MDLBEAST Radio was there for it, Ninyaz working the floor as the arena filled. She asked Danny Tang what the Kingdom could expect from the night, and the answer went straight past the hardware.
“Only the most fierce competition that you can see. Don’t forget, this is not just two machines fighting each other out. They’re actually supported and built by the human builders, the coders, and also the drivers.”
That is the structure underneath CyberHero. Every robot in the arena carries a team behind it: builders who design and engineer the machine, coders who train the AI, drivers who make the calls in real time. On the night, the drivers were professional Street Fighter players. Tang’s description of what the format does to esports is deliberately modest.
“We’re just expanding the scope of esports a little.”
Why here first
Hero Esports is the largest esports company in Asia, and CyberHero is the IP it chose to take worldwide. Riyadh got it before anywhere else, and Tang’s reasoning was geographic before it was commercial.
“Saudi Arabia is a natural intersection between the East and the West. It is such a great connector. When we started discussing where do we want to take our IP next, first global stop, Riyadh is a very natural choice for us.”
Ninyaz put to Tang what the room already knew, that the Kingdom is a serious consumer of esports. September 9 was the test of whether that appetite extended to something nobody here had seen before.
The part that is not a show
Then there is the piece Ninyaz had to coax out of Tang, having heard about it from what she called a little birdie.
The CyberHero Saudi-China Scholar Program will take up to 30 Saudi students to three cities in China, inside robotics companies, technology institutions and research organizations. Tang framed it as the actual point rather than a corporate add-on.
“When you look into the future of robotic development, what’s really essential is the people, the talent. We believe young talents around the world, whether you are from China or Saudi Arabia or somewhere else. We want to encourage them, get them excited, and want to work in this space and play in the space.”
The end of that pipeline is not a press release. It is the arena.
“With that knowledge, hopefully one day they can compete in CyberHero, either as a driver or as a coder or as a builder.”
Eight cities
Riyadh was the first of eight planned CyberHero events across four regions: the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Asia. Two of the eight are earmarked for this region. Hero Esports is also building a global technology lab at its Shanghai headquarters, and combat is only the opening discipline, with more formats to come as the machines get better at more things.
For one night in September, though, it was ten humanoids in a Riyadh arena, a Saudi crowd finding out what that sounds like, and us in the middle of it.
MDLBEAST Radio was on the ground at CyberHero x Riyadh. For more from the Kingdom’s music, culture and events, tune in across the Kingdom on 104.8 Riyadh, 98.1 Jeddah, 97.4 Dammam and 87.6 Abha, or listen live at mdlbeastradio.com.
More on CyberHero: the official announcement of CyberHero x Riyadh.
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