NHN Holds Recruitment-Linked Hackathon, Ramping Up Efforts to Secure AI Talent

[Financial News] NHN held a recruitment-linked hackathon that comprehensively evaluated participants’ ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) and other skills. The company is seeking game and AI talent as it accelerates innovation in AI-powered games.
According to industry sources on the 8th, NHN recently held the recruitment-linked hackathon Next AI Network 2026 (NAN 2026).
Supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), the event was organized as part of NHN’s company-wide strategy to embed AI-driven workplace innovation. The competition rate for advancing to the finals was approximately 59 to 1.
After preliminary assignments were reviewed, the 10 selected teams took part in the finals held from the 4th to the 6th at NHN Play Museum, NHN’s headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province. The 48-hour final round required each team to develop a game concept by combining one subject keyword, one feature keyword, and the common theme “2026.”
A 15-member judging panel, comprising six executives from NHN’s game business division and nine practitioners from development, servers, business, art, and other fields, evaluated the entries on their use of AI, level of completion, creativity, and implementation of the keywords before selecting the winners.
The grand prize went to “Doppelgänger” by the Journey to the West team. Doppelgänger is a real-time, turn-based battle game in which teams of three capture objectives. Built around a territorial struggle between wild animals and robot AIs that imitate them, the game features an AI system that learns users’ behavioral patterns and predicts their next moves. “Small Gallery, Big Picture” by the Third-Person Observer View team won the top excellence award, while “23” by the Bugs and Features team received the excellence award. The grand-prize, top-excellence, and excellence-award teams received KRW 50 million, KRW 20 million, and KRW 10 million, respectively. All winners will receive the recruitment-linked benefit of an opportunity to take a final interview, and bonuses will be paid upon hiring based on their length of service. Each of the seven finalist teams that did not win an award received a KRW 500,000 challenge prize.
Kim Sang-ho, head of NHN’s game business division, said, “NHN will continue driving innovation in games through AI, leveraging the data and service-operation capabilities we have accumulated over many years, together with the AI game specialists discovered through this event.”
[email protected] Jang Min-kwon Reporter