Tencent Video's Legend of Magic Jade mini-drama integrates interactive elements as short-video segment wins eyeballs

Chinese online mini-dramas are becoming more interactive with a new series from tech giant Tencent Holdings integrating video-gaming features, as industry players try to win viewers in the fast-growing segment.

Tencent Video in November launched an interactive version of Legend of Magic Jade, a drama known as Mo Yu Xuan Qi in Chinese, for season two of the drama, which allows the audience to choose the storyline for the protagonist in the show. The mini-drama features 27 episodes with each one lasting only a few minutes.

In the show viewers are tasked with helping Zhao Ruoqi, the leading female character who started as a low-ranking maid in an imperial palace, to make different life choices in her fight for survival and attempts to seek revenge for the wrongs done to her family.

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Like in a video game, the viewer can collect props and complete missions, with the wrong choices leading to a "game over" message, at which point the show turns into an immersive game.

The development comes as the online short-drama market in China is expected to reach 37.4 billion yuan (US$5.3 billion) by the end of 2023, a 268 per cent rise compared to the previous year, according to a recent report by consultancy firm iiMedia Research.

Over 150 online mini-dramas were released in the third quarter alone, almost double the total number of all of 2022, iiMedia data showed.

Mini-dramas have been boosted amid a surge in the consumption of short video content on platforms such as Douyin, the domestic version of ByteDance's TikTok. Tencent, which operates the long-form video streaming site Tencent Video, has been putting more effort into shorter videos, and announced a dedicated channel for high-quality mini-dramas in 2021.

This is not the first time that interactive gameplay and video have been combined. The first season of the Legend of Magic Jade, released by Tencent Video in 2020, was also interactive but with a more simple design and format.

Netflix has also released interactive shows and films to let the audience control the story, which started with the science fiction film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018.

Interest in interactive content has been revived by the success of controversial romance simulation game Love Is All Around, which features human actresses in a first-person interactive story. The game, developed by Guangzhou-based studio Intiny, topped the charts on Steam in early November, less than a month after launch.

However, Chinese regulators remain vigilant and have tightened controls on short drama content. The National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) said in November that it would take measures to "strengthen and refine management" of these short online dramas.

Under a range of proposed measures, the NRTA will establish a content-screening system for short web dramas and extend its supervision to the distribution networks for these shows, including dedicated apps and short video platforms.

Following the NRTA announcement, Douyin - which has over 600 million daily active users - tightened its screening of advertisers looking to promote short-form dramas.

Advertisers will need to show proper licensing documents, according to a notice published by the company's advertising arm in late November. All licence holders have been pre-screened by government content-control authorities.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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