‘The King’s Avatar’: C-dramas shining a spotlight on gaming

The C-drama The King’s Avatar was a highly anticipated drama due to the acclaim already gathered by the novel and the anime that came before it. Not only has The King’s Avatar caught attention from its previous versions but also as a gaming drama, a genre that has recently caught fire. 

The story of The King’s Avatar centers on Ye Xiu (Yang Yang), an elite player in the online multiplayer video game known as Glory. Ye Xiu is a text-book level expert but through a series of unfortunate circumstances finds himself expelled from his professional team. Only when the tenth server of Glory is released does Ye Xiu pick up the gloves to professionally game again. 

A story of Glory

When Ye Xiu is forced out of his team he is also made to give up his gamer ID and therefore his identity in the game. Without his ID, Ye Xiu gives up gaming in the professional world and instead takes a job as a manager in an internet cafe. 

While working his new day job, Ye Xiu becomes friends with the fiery cafe owner Chen Guo (Jiang Shuying) and meets an assortment of talented players. Then the new server launches and Ye Xiu decides to start from the beginning and come back to the game with a new ID number. 

Chen Guo recognizes Ye Xiu as a skilled gamer and helps him build himself back up again. With ten years of experience under his belt, Ye Xiu becomes the leader of his own team, crewed by the players from the internet cafe, including Chen Guo. Ye Xiu comes back to Glory with a brand new special avatar and an unfinished secret weapon. 

The gaming 

Fans of the actor Yang Yang were excited not only to see him back from his role in the popular 020 (where he also played a gaming expert) but to take on the role of the great gamer Ye Xiung. Jiang Shuying in the role of the internet cafe owner Chen Guo is also commendable for this C-drama as it aims a kick at gender norms seeing as most cafe owners are male. 

The game effects of Glory were also brought to life in The King’s Avatar, an exciting look at the styling and CGI. There was also a huge cast for this C-drama since there were so many teams and individual players battling it out in the esports arena. 

Other dramas like it

Gaming dramas have been gaining huge popularity recently, capitalizing on the overlapping demographic of drama/anime watchers and gamers. Fans of the genre love to see their favorite actors take on roles in the intense sport of online gaming and several noteworthy dramas have been produced as a result. 

Other recent additions to gaming dramas include Gank Your Heart, a story about a gamer with a tarnished reputation who makes life a little worse for a live streamer at an international competition, and Go Go Squid!, a cute drama about a singer who falls hopelessly in love with a computer engineer and gaming legend. 

If you want to catch all forty episodes of The King’s Avatar, the drama is available on Netflix.