Smilegate Hope Studio said on Monday it will launch the "Seongnam Youth AI Creation Workshop-Our Neighborhood Player" with the Seongnam Cultural Foundation.

A total of 28 people will take part, including 20 youths from the after-school academy at the Jeongja Youth Center under the Seongnam Youth and Young Adult Foundation, and eight young mentors majoring in software and AI or interested in AI-based creation.

The program runs for six weeks from Nov. 6. Teams of 5 youths and 2 mentors will look for game ideas in everyday local spaces such as routes to and from school, parks and subway stations.

Participants will then use AI to produce the game’s narrative, art and sound. They plan to publish the completed games themselves on a hosting platform.

The results will be presented and exhibited to fellow youths and parents at a results-sharing event to be held at the Jeongja Youth Center on Dec. 18.

The Seongnam Cultural Foundation will support project planning, operations and administrative work, while Hope Studio will be responsible for program design and operations and mentor training.

Ahead of the workshop, Hope Studio also held pre-training for young mentors at the Seongnam Cultural Foundation on Oct. 16. The training covered the game creation project, a mentoring manual and a safe AI-use creation guide.

The workshop was set up to support youths’ experience in using AI and creating content through cooperation among public institutions, companies and local organizations.

Yoon Jeong-guk (윤정국), chief executive of the Seongnam Cultural Foundation, said, "We will expand cooperation with various local players to broaden cultural and artistic creation opportunities for youths."

Kwon Yeon-ju (권연주), a director at Hope Studio, said, "We are building a sustainable creative environment in cooperation with local institutions so that youths in the local community can develop future capabilities." She added, "We will continue to broaden the scope of cooperation to include both public and private sectors."