Gamasutra's top stories from GDC Europe 2014

That's it, folks: GDC Europe 2014 has officially come to a close, and those attendees who aren't sticking around to tackle Gamescom are making their way home. As usual, the conference inspired a good deal of interesting discussion around some of the topics and titles that are most important to the contemporary European game industry. Gamasutra editors were filing stories about the conference right from the convention center in Cologne, Germany, but you may have missed them if you spent this week anywhere outside the Central European time zone. You can find all of our GDC Europe 2014 coverage here, but we've also gone ahead and taken the liberty of collecting some of our most popular GDC Europe stories from the week into a single condensed list for your reading pleasure. Even if you weren't able to attend in person, it's worth taking the time to read through some of the stories that came out of the show and give some thought to issues like the state of the AAA market, what it takes to leave that business and strike out as an indie, and how developers can learn to responsibly pitch, market and monetize their work. Let's see which GDC Europe stories mattered most to you, the readers, shall we? The hilarious success story of Goat Simulator - Coffee Stain Studios' Armin Ibrisagic shares the success story of Goat Simulator, and how a joke concept -- and a goat asset bought on sale from the internet -- led the studio to surprise success. Don't monetize like League of Legends, consultant says - By many metrics, League of Legends is the most-played game in the world. But its monetization system probably won't work for your online game -- at least according to consultant Teut Weidemann, who explained Riot's stats in this GDC Europe talk. How to get your game covered by YouTubers - Gamasutra editor Mike Rose returned to GDC Europe this year to give a talk on the best ways to get in touch with YouTubers. Here, you'll find a written version of the talk. Independent AAA: Ninja Theory's new path to survive, thrive in new age - Developers seem to sympathize with Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades, who opened up at GDC Europe about the incredible struggles the studio has faced versus the AAA industry machine -- and his hopes for a new path forward for "independent AAA" games. Standing out: Paradox CEO's tips for a complicated market - In a climate where widely-imitated successes lead to rapidly-proliferating genres and widespread borrowing, how can you find a vision for your own game that stands out? Paradox CEO Fred Wester shared his advice on the subject during a presentation at GDC Europe. A classic postmortem for the original Broken Sword - Veteran developer Charles Cecil recounts the development of the adventure game classic -- with several important takeaways about what worked then, and should still work now. What makes a game a true sci-fi experience? - As part of a GDC Europe postmortem for his game MirrorMoon EP, Santa Ragione's Pietro Righi Riva reasoned that not many games that label themselves as "sci-fi" actually fall into that genre. Perfecting your pitch the Vlambeer way - Rami Ismail (of Ridiculous Fishing and Nuclear Throne developer Vlambeer) took the stage to exhort his fellow developers to condense and refine their pitches, both to publishers and to the press.