Around €387,000 in costs, five visitors at the online party on 29 November 2022. It was part of an EU-funded initiative called Global Gateway. This was reported by the magazine Devex (via Politico), whose editor attended the party himself. In addition to him, at least some of the other visitors are also likely to be people who participated in the party’s organization.
The party had targeted 18- to 35-year-old residents of the EU who were relatively neutral about the EU and not particularly interested in politics, Devex was told by a spokesperson for the EU Commission. The initiative is intended to promote interest in the Metaverse and similar developments.
Devex learned from some employees of the initiative, who was also not named, that the party and the promotion on Twitter for it had also gone down anything but well internally with the creators. One of those involved is said to have described the whole thing as “digital garbage.”
At the interactive party, people could dance to dance music in the form of colorful paper clips on virtual dream beaches and other environments. The avatars alone are unlikely to appeal to any young adults – and organizers should have suspected this early on.
Virtual parties can undoubtedly be a huge success. Epic Games does something like that occasionally in the context of Fortnite, partly with well-known world stars like Travis Scott – which attracts a few million fans to the screen. However, the budgets for these events are likely to be much larger than what the EU has invested.