OpenAI said on Monday it will hold OpenAI Game Builders Seoul, a game development hackathon using its coding agent Codex, in Seoul on Aug. 31.

The event, which OpenAI is holding for the first time worldwide on the theme of game development using Codex, will include first-generation game developers such as Song Jae-kyung (송재경), who developed massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) including Baramui Nara, Lineage and ArcheAge. At the venue, Song is set to introduce his journey of returning to game development using Codex.

The event will be held with support from Com2uS. Participants will develop games using Codex, which supports writing, editing and testing code based on natural-language instructions. They will then link Com2uS' game backend platform Hive to apply essential functions for launch and operation, including login, payments, user analytics and security.

The event will run in 2 tracks. Track 1 will feature presentations in which participants introduce games developed in advance with Codex. Track 2 will hold a hackathon in which participants challenge themselves to develop a game with the latest version of Codex within a limited 5 hours on the day of the event.

Winners of the Track 1 popularity vote will receive $50,000 worth of OpenAI application programming interface (API) credits and a 1-year subscription to ChatGPT Pro. Track 2 outstanding teams will receive a 1-year subscription to ChatGPT Pro, and all finalists will be given $100 worth of API credits.

Applications will be accepted from Aug. 4 to 26 through a website. Applicants must submit a prototype developed with Codex and their production experience, and 40 teams selected through screening will be invited to the Aug. 31 event.

Oliver Jay (올리버 제이), head of international business at OpenAI, said, "Korea is a country with game development capabilities and a creative developer community, making it the best place to create new possibilities where games and artificial intelligence (AI) meet together." He added, "We will support more developers so they can use Codex to turn ideas into real games and offer them as services, and discover new possibilities for creation and development that were previously difficult to attempt."