The virtualization of cultural events in the metaverse creates opportunities to generate valuable and innovative experiences that replicate and extend in-person events; but the process faces associated challenges. In the absence of relevant empirical studies, the aim of this article is to analyze the positive and negative aspects of the user experience in a cultural event held in the metaverse. A mixed-methods approach is employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results from three focus groups demonstrated the difficulty that users face in focusing their attention on the main elements of the metaverse, and the inability of this virtual sphere to convey the authenticity of a cultural event. Based on these findings, a metaverse-focused quantitative study was conducted to examine whether perceived gamification mitigate the negative effects of users failing to pay attention in their metaverse experiences. When users increased their attention levels, their ability to imagine the real experience and their perceptions of the authenticity of the cultural event increased, which produced positive behavioral intentions. This is one of the first studies to empirically analyze the tourist experience in the metaverse; managers and policymakers can benefit from the results to hold valuable virtual cultural events.

虚拟宇宙中文化活动的虚拟化创造了产生有价值和创新体验的机会，这些体验可以复制和扩展现场活动；但这一过程面临着相关的挑战。在缺乏相关实证研究的情况下，本文的目的是分析虚拟宇宙举办的文化活动中用户体验的积极和消极方面。采用混合方法来检验所提出的假设。三个焦点小组的结果表明，用户将注意力集中在虚拟世界的主要元素上面临着困难，并且这个虚拟领域无法传达文化事件的真实性。基于这些发现，进行了一项以虚拟世界为重点的定量研究，以检验感知游戏化是否减轻了用户在虚拟世界体验中未能集中注意力的负面影响。当用户的注意力水平提高时，他们想象真实体验的能力和对文化事件真实性的感知就会增强，从而产生积极的行为意图。这是最早对虚拟宇宙中的游客体验进行实证分析的研究之一；管理者和政策制定者可以从举办有价值的虚拟文化活动的结果中受益。