NHN said on the 8th that it successfully wrapped up the hiring-linked hackathon "Next AI Network 2026 (NAN 2026)" to discover talent in games and artificial intelligence (AI).
"NAN 2026" is a hackathon event planned to find game talent that will design the next stage of AI. It was promoted as part of NHN's companywide strategy to internalize AI-led work innovation recently underway.
The 10 teams selected after a review of preliminary assignments took part in the finals held for three days from the 4th to the 6th at NHN's Pangyo headquarters building "Play Museum" in Gyeonggi.
Judging for this "NAN 2026" was handled by a 15-member panel consisting of six executives from NHN's game business division and nine working-level staff across development, server, business, and art. On the final day, the panel selected the winners based on each team's 20-minute presentations and demos, comprehensively evaluating AI utilization, completeness, creativity, and the degree of keyword implementation.
After fierce competition, "Doppelganger" by the Journey to the West team, which boldly interpreted the keywords "domain" and "prediction" for 2026, won the grand prize. "Doppelganger" is a real-time, turn-based combat game in which 3v3 teams capture control points, built around a concept of territorial battles between wild animals and robot AIs that mimic them. The top excellence award went to "Small Gallery, Big Picture" by the Third-person Observer Perspective team, and the excellence award went to "23" by the Bug and Feature team. The grand prize, top excellence, and excellence winners were awarded 50 million won, 20 million won, and 10 million won, respectively.
All winners will be offered hiring opportunities. Winners will receive a final interview opportunity, and if hired, bonuses will be paid based on length of service.
Lee Seo-yeon, Head of Team of the Journey to the West team, which won the grand prize, said, "There was no dedicated developer in the team, and we did almost all the work together," and noted, "We developed using AI for about 95%, including Claude Code."
Kim Sang-ho, head of NHN's game business division, said, "With the AI game specialists discovered through this event, NHN will continue to drive game innovation using AI, leveraging the data and service operation capabilities it has accumulated over a long period of time."