Takahiro Hayashi won his first nationwide title in shogi while still in high school and by the age of 22 he was the world amateur champion. His coaches were urging him to turn pro. But Hayashi wanted to be an entrepreneur, not a chess player. So in 2009, he found himself in a room with local venture capitalists, presenting a 120-page pitch about his social game firm. "One of the investors told me that he didn't really listen to the explanation of our business plan," the 41-year-old Hayashi said in an interview at Heroz Inc.'s headquarters in Tokyo.

Takahiro Hayashi won his first nationwide title in shogi -- Japanese chess -- while still in high school, and by the age of 22, he was the world amateur champion. His coaches were urging him to turn pro. But Hayashi wanted to be an entrepreneur, not a chess player. And so, in 2009, he found himself in a room with some local venture capitalists, presenting a 120-page pitch about his social game firm. The financiers kind of tuned out.

Bandai Namco, the gamesmaker behind Tekken, Dark Souls and a whole bunch of Dragonball games, has invested in an artificial intelligence startup. The team at Heroz have an algorithm for shogi (Japanese chess) that's bested several professional human players in public matches. Bandai Namco is hoping to tap into that know-how to improve its non-playing character behavior in future titles, although expect to see it in much simpler games long before that eventual Dark Souls successor. Heroz has dabbled with games outside the likes of chess and backgammon. Earlier in 2016, it worked with the Pokemon Company to make Pokemon Co-master, a figurine-battling board game for smartphones that (according to Nikkei) didn't do so well.