Game Developers Conference Europe 2015 organizers are excited to once again open a special call for European developers to submit to the second annual European Innovative Games Showcase.

Taking place during the Independent Games Summit at the Cologne, Germany show this August, the winning creators will be offered 5-minute microtalks at the final session of GDC Europe's IGS, showcasing what's special about their current project. For an idea of what we're talking about, check out the GDC Vault video of the inaugural 2014 EIGS.

Anyone who successfully submits will also be given full Speaker Passes to the event (including full access to every GDC Europe session and the massive gamescom trade/public event) if selected. In addition, detailed video of the event will be showcased on Gamasutra and GDC Vault for free after the event.

Preparations for this year's GDC Europe event in Cologne, Germany are well underway, and today GDC officials are excited to confirm another pair of great talks for the upcoming August conference. 

The GDC Europe Independent Games Summit is back, and this year it features Croteam's Alen Ladavac diving into his studio's workflow in a talk entitled "Fast Iteration Tools in the Production of The Talos Principle."

Croteam is a small studio with outsized goals, and to make big games they've developed tools and processes with an eye towards keeping their team working as efficiently as possible. Catch Ladavac's talk to learn how Croteam optimizes things like content editing, source control, automated testing to build big games without sacrificing quality.

As the industry gears up for GDC Europe, show organizers are excited to announce that a pair of game industry veterans have joined the event's main advisory board and Indie Games Summit board to help program the lectures and panel sessions taking place at this year's conference in Cologne, Germany, alongside the Gamescom trade fair.

The GDC Europe advisory board, which includes game industry notables like Rovio's Katharina Hautz, CD Projekt Red's Bartlomiej Gawel, DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson, and Rocksteady Studios' David Hego, is very excited to welcome its newest member: Kalypso Media Group global managing director Stefan Marcinek.

The Independent Games Festival China - which will take place this October alongside GDC China in Shanghai - has opened its call for submissions and is accepting indie game entries from the pan-Pacific area from now through July 20th.

GDC China will once again host all three main elements of IGF China, including the Independent Games Summit, the IGF Pavilion, and the prestigious IGF China Awards.

For the seventh year running the IGF Summit at GDC China will feature sessions from some of the world's top developers, while the IGF Pavilion will showcase some of the region's best independent and student games.

| March 2015

In This Issue:

• Amazon - Corey Badcock, head of developer evangelism at Amazon Apps & Services, reveals some of the highlights of Amazon's overview of the Amazon Devices and Services for Game Developers talk at GDC SF 2015, and why the conference is such an important part of the company's marketing strategy.

[After attending GDC 2015 last week, Gamasutra editor Alex Wawro rounds up a few photos from the Official GDC Flickr page to give you an overview of the show.]

GDC 2015 is over, and with record-breaking attendance this year it seems like the greater part of the game industry is still trying to get back to business as usual. 

But not everyone had a chance to attend GDC last week, and those that did couldn't possibly have had time to see everything. 

We did our best to bring you news, interviews and analysis of the most interesting events of the show in our GDC 2015 coverage, but a certain aspect of the experience is lost when you try to convey the tenor of a vibrant event like this through words alone.

Monolith Productions' open-world action game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was honored with the Game of the Year award this evening at the 15th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony, which was hosted by industry veteran Tim Schafer as part of the ongoing 2015 Game Developers Conference.

But it was the critically-acclaimed mobile puzzle game Monument Valley which came away with the most awards of the night, including the Best Visual Art, Innovation & Best Handheld/Mobile Game Awards. Inspired by the visual style of Japanese prints & set in an M.C. Escher-esque world, Monument Valley was developed over the course of ten months.

The Best Debut Award went to indie firm Stoic Studio, founded by former BioWare developers, which developed the notable The Banner Saga, an epic Viking-themed tactical role-playing game.