Michel Ancel

Michel Ancel is a celebrated French game designer for Ubisoft known for creating Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil.

Career
Ancel's first title, Mechanic Warriors, was developed for software house Lankhor. Ancel then joined Ubisoft as a graphic artist at the age of 17, where he worked on the graphics of games such as The Intruder and The Teller. In 1992, he began work on Rayman, his directorial debut. It was originally released in 1995 for the Atari Jaguar, and in 1996 for the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.

Ancel was also heavily involved in the development of Rayman 2: The Great Escape, but had only an advisory role on Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. Although he praised its development team, he claims he would have "made the game differently".

In 2003, he released Beyond Good & Evil, which garnered critical acclaim and a cult following, but was a commercial failure. However, film director Peter Jackson's admiration of the game--and his frustration with EA's handling of the The Lord of the Rings license--led to Ancel being given direction of the King Kong video game adaptation. In spite of Ubisoft's reluctance to produce a Beyond Good and Evil sequel, Ancel has expressed a clear wish to produce one in the future.

On April 5, 2006, Ubisoft announced Ancel was leading the development of the fourth game in the Rayman series, Rayman Raving Rabbids, for the Nintendo Wii. The game began production in early 2005 and was released on November 15 2006 for the launch of the Wii. However, Ancel was notably absent from the project after its E3 announcement, and he has made no public appearances regarding the game after the development team switched focus from a free-roaming platformer to the final minigames format shortly after E3.

Recognition
On March 13, 2006, he, along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Frederick Raynal, was knighted by the French Minister of Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, a knight of arts and literature. It was the first time that video game developers were honored with this distinction.

Design philosophy
Ancel aims for a high degree of freedom in his games. He is critical of games that claim to offer freedom, but present limits or invisible boundaries where players do not expect them.

In designing Peter Jackson's King Kong, Ancel chose not to show any overlay information to increase the player's immersion in the game world, a design choice also seen in games such as ICO. For instance, low health is conveyed not with a meter but through blurred vision and the sound of heavy breathing.

Ancel rejects the often held belief that video games of French origin are more original, claiming the problem lies not in the development process, but in risk-averseness at US publishers.

Games

 * Rayman (1995) - Concept & Design
 * Tonic Trouble (1999) - Concept
 * Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999) - Concept, Art Design & Story
 * Rayman Rush (2002) - Concept
 * Beyond Good & Evil (2003) - Director, Design & Story
 * Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) - Designer
 * Rayman Raving Rabbids - (2006) - Character Design

Trivia

 * Ancel worked on, but did not design, Tonic Trouble (1999), which features limbless characters in the same mould as Rayman. He shares credit on his Rayman games with Frédéric Houde, while Jacques Exertier contributed many of the cinematic and story elements of Beyond Good & Evil and King Kong.