Some of Nexon's well-known titles include MapleStory and Dungeon&Fighter — the latter of which is very popular in China, according to Mahoney.
He said that advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning can help the gaming industry keep players returning.
"The topic of balance between different players is very important," he said. "If we're in the same game world and we make your character a lot more powerful because we want to keep you coming back, it could hurt that balance for the rest of us who are playing. It can make us relatively less strong."
Often, a game world can have millions of people playing at the same time. Game companies can find it hard to maintain the balance between players — but that's something a machine can do a lot better, Mahoney said.
He said that blockchain technology can help maintain in-game reputation and trust between players who are essentially anonymous in the game world.
"Anonymized reputation is very important, and you build up that reputation by your activities in certain games," Mahoney said, adding that "people want to trust other people within new games, and blockchain technology can help bring that reputation across different sort of games."
Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect that Nexon is a Japan-based company.
