What is it about?
The metaverse has been heralded as a revolutionary space for virtualizing cultural events, but the reality is more complex. This paper takes a rare empirical approach — combining focus groups and a large-scale quantitative study — to identify both the opportunities and the barriers of experiencing cultural events in the metaverse. A real cultural event held annually in Zaragoza, Spain, was virtualized on a dedicated metaverse platform. Focus groups with 20 participants revealed that users frequently feel disoriented, not knowing what to do or where to look, which generates negative affect. A subsequent study with 219 participants confirmed that this lack of focused attention leads to negative emotions that reduce users' ability to imagine the real event and perceive its existential authenticity — and consequently reduces their intentions to attend the physical event. Crucially, gamification elements (quizzes, challenges, scavenger hunts) embedded in the metaverse significantly mitigate these negative effects by giving users purpose and direction.
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Why is it important?
The events industry is projected to be worth nearly $3 trillion by 2031, and virtual events are becoming a structural component of that ecosystem. Yet most metaverse events fail to deliver on their promise. This paper identifies a specific, actionable barrier — attentional overload — and proposes a concrete solution: gamification. Event organizers and metaverse designers can use these findings to build more engaging, navigable virtual experiences that successfully transmit the cultural value of events and convert virtual attendees into physical visitors. This work is one of the first empirical analyses of the tourist experience in the metaverse.
Perspectives
The title — "the dark side of the metaverse" — reflects something I genuinely believe: that immersive technology research has been overly optimistic, focusing on benefits while underexamining the costs. This paper pushed me to listen carefully to what users actually experienced, not what the technology promised. The focus groups were illuminating: people felt anxious, confused, and tired in the metaverse — reactions rarely captured in lab experiments. Finding that gamification effectively rescues the experience was encouraging, but the broader takeaway I carry is that novelty alone does not create value. Design decisions matter enormously. I hope this paper serves as a reality check for organizations rushing into the metaverse without thinking carefully about the user experience.
Sergio Barta
Universidad de Zaragoza
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The dark side of the metaverse: The role of gamification in event virtualization, International Journal of Information Management, April 2024, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2023.102726.
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