 Goat Simulator started as a joke prototype from an internal one-month game jam held by Coffee Stain Studios in January 2014, after completing work for their game Sanctum 2. The game was described by the lead developer Armin Ibrisagic as "an old school skating game, except instead of being a skater, you 're a goat, and instead of doing tricks, you wreck stuff". The idea followed after originally pitching the game as a variation of QWOP, where the player would control the individual limbs of the goat separately with various keyboard keys; this concept was rejected in favor of the more Tony Hawk's Pro Skater-type of gameplay the final game presents. Ibrisagic had focused on goats after jokingly trying to convince his coworkers that goats would achieve viral attention on the Internet in much the same way that cats presently do.
