Nexon’s game development knowledge-sharing event, the 2026 Nexon Developers Conference (NDC 26), opened on June 16 at the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.

Marking its 19th edition, NDC 26 consists of 51 sessions across nine fields. Topics range across game development and services including game planning, programming, visual art and sound, and production, as well as artificial intelligence (AI), IP, blockchain trends and global cases.

"Use AI as a tool, not a rival"... User understanding is the key competitiveness

In his opening welcome address, Lee Jung-heon (이정헌), CEO of Nexon Japan, described current technological change as an "inevitable, definitive trend" and set out a direction for attitudes toward AI and competitiveness.

Lee said, "AI is a revolution in creation and computation, lowering the marginal cost of generating and analysing content itself close to zero." He added, "Tools that make implementation easier are given equally to both experienced workers and newcomers." He said that as implementation tools become standardised, users’ tastes and expectations will rise and become more segmented, and content will be required to have high completeness and broad fun.

Lee stressed two responses. The first was to define AI not as a competitor but as a tool, and to use it actively and proactively. He said, "What AI is good at is work with a predetermined answer," adding, "Undefined problems, and the process of creating empathy and emotion between people, remain areas only humans can handle for now."

The second was deep understanding of and empathy with users. Lee said, "At a time when everyone has the same tools in hand, insight and judgement about what to make become competitiveness, and that insight comes from understanding and empathy for users." He said, "What users get excited about and at what moments they feel value should be the most important standard for deciding what to make with new technology."

On the meaning of NDC, he said, "The faster the pace of technological change, the greater the value of understanding one another’s fields and exchanging on-the-ground stories." He added, "No matter how much technology changes, users ultimately remember and come back for fun games," and said he hoped NDC would be a place to reflect on that essence.

Expert dialogues and 15 AI sessions... Embark Studios also joins

A key feature of this year’s NDC is that it has prepared eight dialogue sessions in a panel discussion format that go beyond single-speaker lectures.

Scheduled sessions include one in which Nexon Games CEO Park Yong-hyun (박용현) shares leadership for simultaneously leading multiple new project titles, and one in which Blue Archive PD Kim Yong-ha (김용하) and Project Moon CEO Kim Ji-hoon (김지훈) share planning and operations know-how. In AI, a session is set for Kim Tae-hoon (김태훈), CTO of Love&Fury and a former OpenAI engineer, and Nexon executive Lee Yong-wook (이용욱) to discuss how introducing AI changes how organisations grow. Another session pairs Nexon division head Kang Deok-won (강덕원) and Krafton VP Lim Kyung-young (임경영) to share their companies’ AI transformation experiences.

Of the 51 sessions, 15 are on AI topics. Developers from Embark Studios, which developed the globally successful title Arc Raiders, will also take part and present practical applications of machine learning, an art production automation pipeline and methodologies for game data analysis. A Google DeepMind director, Roblox Korea, and RimWorld director Tynan Sylvester, among figures from the game and IT industries in and outside South Korea, will also join as speakers.

Other sessions prepared broadly include a Blue Archive postmortem looking back from the early development stage to mark the service’s fifth anniversary, a making-of session on Mabinogi Mobile’s main quest, and sessions covering behind-the-scenes development and operations of major live Nexon games including The First Descendant and MapleStory M.

During NDC 26, a game art exhibition, NEXTAGE, will be held on floors 1 and 2 of Nexon’s Pangyo headquarters. Artists from Nexon companies will showcase about 150 works, from actual project pieces to fan art, in various forms including digital illustrations, sculptures and videos. It will be the first time since 2019 that the NDC art exhibition is fully opened offline to the outside. An NDC Music & Talk concert will also be held on Pangyo Content Street.