Following announcements of talks from Paradox and Double Fine, GDC Europe organizers are excited to debut two more notable sessions for the major European video game conference, which is being held in Germany this August. In these freshly announced talks, Coffee Stain Studios will shed light on the development and remarkable success of Goat Simulator, while a senior SuperData analyst will offer tips on how developers can better understand and succeed in the digital games market. Organized by UBM Tech Game Network, GDC Europe, now in its sixth year in Germany, will run Monday through Wednesday, August 11-13 at the Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany, co-located with Europe’s biggest video game trade and public show gamescom. The event will include topics spanning everything from AAA through mobile gaming and indie, with equal attention paid to the art, design and business of games. Today’s announced talks cover both the art and the business of game development, and they should include learnings for the entire community. Firstly, Coffee Stain Studios’ Anton Westbergh and Armin Ibrisagic are planning to lead a lighthearted session, “How Goat Simulator Really Did Become Our Next Game,” which is meant to inspire designers, producers, and pretty much anyone who works on games to chase seemingly “crazy” ideas. Ibrisagic and Westbergh plan to cover how Goat Simulator grew out of an internal game jam, why the studio’s uncharacteristically unorganized approach development on the game earned it remarkable goodwill, and how it ultimately became the studio’s most popular game in the course of a single evening. Developers can also expect to hear more about the nuts and bolts of making games without rigid project plans, as well as tips on keeping seemingly haphazard open development schemes under control and a bit of inspiring talk about the value of making seemingly unconventional games. For more business-minded folks, SuperData senior analyst Stephanie Llamas is giving a data-rich talk titled, appropriately enough, “Super Data for Digital Games” that aims to address everything from eSports to the maturing mobile markets. Llamas plans to explain how small events can affect digital games markets on a massive scale, using graphs, charts and other data culled from SuperData’s archive of digital games market data. She’ll also try to shed light on which market performance indicators developers should pay attention to and how we can use them to analyze a game’s performance, as well as keep tabs on how a given digital games market is changing to forecast future trends. It’s an ambitious, market-focused presentation that should nevertheless offer useful insights for anyone who makes games for a living. Of course, these are just two of the many exciting sessions that will be announced for GDC Europe 2014 in the coming weeks, and early birds can register for GDC Europe 2014 by July 16 to save 200 euros on an All Access Pass. In addition, this year marks the GDC Europe debut of the Student Pass, a more affordable alternative to the All Access Pass created specifically for qualified students interested in learning and networking at GDC Europe 2014 – as well as the return of the Indie Games Summit pass. All GDC Europe passes also allow visitors to attend Gamescom from Wednesday to Friday. For more information, please visit the GDC Europe website. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech
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