TY  - CHAP
A1  - Truman, Samuel
A1  - von Mammen, Sebastian
T1  - Interactive Self-Assembling Agent Ensembles
T2  - Proceedings of the 1st Games Technology Summit
N2  - In this paper, we bridge the gap between procedural content generation (PCG) and user-generated content (UGC) by proposing and demonstrating an interactive agent-based model of self-assembling ensembles that can be directed though user input. We motivate these efforts by considering the opportunities technology provides to pursue game designs based on according game design frameworks. We present three different use cases of the proposed model that emphasize its potential to (1) self-assemble into predefined 3D graphical assets, (2) define new structures in the context of virtual environments by self-assembling layers on the surfaces of arbitrary 3D objects, and (3) allow novel structures to self-assemble only considering the model’s configuration and no external dependencies. To address the performance restrictions in computer games, we realized the prototypical model implementation by means of an efficient entity component system (ECS). We conclude the paper with an outlook on future steps to further explore novel interactive, dynamic PCG mechanics and to ensure their efficiency.
KW  - procedural content generation
KW  - user-generated content
KW  - game mechanics
KW  - agent-based models
KW  - self-assembly
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-246032
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Knoll, Johannes
A1  - Schramm, Holger
T1  - Advertising in social network sites – Investigating the social influence of user-generated content on online advertising effects
JF  - Communications
N2  - In today’s social online world there is a variety of interaction and participatory possibilities which enable web users to actively produce content themselves. 
This user-generated content is omnipresent in the web and there is growing evidence that it is used to select or evaluate professionally created online information. 
The present study investigated how this surrounding content affects online advertising by drawing from social influence theory. Specifically, it was assumed that 
web users sharing an interpersonal relationship (interpersonal influence) and/or a group membership (collective influence) with authors of user-generated content 
which appears next to advertising on the web page are more strongly influenced in their response to the advertising than unrelated users. These assumptions were 
tested in a 2 × 2 between-subject experiment with 118 students who were exposed to four different Facebook profiles that differed in terms of interpersonal 
connection to the source (existent/non-existent) and collective connection to the source (existent/non-existent). The results show a significant impact in the case 
of collective influence, but not in the case of interpersonal influence. The underlying mechanisms of this effect and implications of the results for online advertising 
are discussed.
KW  - online advertising
KW  - social network sites
KW  - social influence
KW  - user-generated content
KW  - advertising effects
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-194192
SN  - 1613-4087
SN  - 0341-2059
N1  - This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.
VL  - 40
IS  - 3
ER  -