SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your current game "Rayman Origins" is developed by a pretty small team compared to your last title "King Kong". Was this a deliberate decision?
Michel Ancel: Yes, looking back at last year, we only had five to ten people working on Rayman Origins. I wanted to have only person working on backgrounds, one working on sound design/composing, another one for the characters. That way the creative process of working on a game is much more personal and intensive. Working with a small team means being able to concentrate on small surprises and the special 'touch'.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How important is adding something personal and having the opportunity to maintain control over designing the game?
Ancel: There are many personal ideas. In this title, there are various cultural elements, which are influenced by art (especially French art). We work together with artists from the best French art academies and we ensure that they have a huge influence on gameplay.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you consider games as art?
Ancel: That's hard to say, but yes, I'd say so, as we start with an empty page just as all other artists. We see games as an opportunity to express emotions and to tell a story, not only as something to beat highscores and reaching certain goals. It's a way to take a look into fantasy. You don't need to show everything in games, instead you may create noises, which players hear and then they start to use their imagination. These elements, found in movies and books, are also part of games.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The industry as a whole looks to be taking a different direction - using large teams and immense budgets. Do you also consider these blockbuster titles as art?
Ancel: It depends. Even the largest games can be creative. Creating a movie, a lot of people are involved, but at first only the writer and the director dertermine the direction of the film. I don't see direct relation between the number of people involved and the artistic direction. If you want to achieve something, it's important to create something personal and avoid having to make compromises with marketing and similar divisions - at least at the beginning. Producing a game does not mean calculating the share of fantasy and science fiction.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: It appears as if this is exactly the production method used though.
Ancel: I don't think that this strategy will be successful in the long-term. Short-term, it might be very cool, it might work as the gaming industry didn't have that many blockbusters and that high budgets only some years ago. But the blockbusters look all the same. It's purely based on mathematics, the addition of certain elements. I belive that people will look for deep experiences instead of huge effects in the long-term.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Eight years ago, you worked on a deep gaming experience, Beyond Good & Evil, which commercially failed. Do you believe things have changed since then?
Ancel: I'm not sure whether much has changed since then, but I think that we have different opportunities with other platforms today. We could do some experiments with such a game today: Providing it on downloadable services or making it for the iPad in one way or the other.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the past two years Western and detective games sold well. Such games didn't have a much of a chance until then commercially.
Ancel: Nonetheless, these games place huge emphasis on weapons or a violent story. They are interesting and fine, but Beyond Good&Evil was different: The protagonist was female, she had no weapon, she was journalist. And that made potential buyers somewhat careful. The boxart did not have a weapon but a camera. In fact, we even replaced the camera with a weapon [on the boxart only, I assume] and we noticed that we could sell much more games then. It might be the same story, but with an armed male protagonist on the boxart it will sell much better. Still, I did not want to sacrifice my perception of the game for that.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How do new platforms such as the iPad change the market and the production of games?
Ancel: I like to compare it to movies. On the one hand you have huge cinemas, but then you also have TVs, and nowadays PCs and YouTube. I believe that games on HD consoles and mobile platforms will always be made. At the same time the question of content becomes more than question on which platforms we play these games.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will creativity return with these new platforms?
Ancel: I believe that small games will become creative and that this sector got too little attention till now. There are new concepts in the gaming industry, but it's just the same as in the movie industry, these concepts don't do harm to other concepts. A game such as Rayman Origins would not work on the iPad as a huge part of the game is playing together. That's only possible on a home console [so why is it coming to 3DS and PC then?]. A Rayman title for iPad would look vastly different.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You seem to be a unique person in the gaming industry. Your team works in an old mansion near Mediterranean sea, whereas you competitors work in large studios located in office blocks. How did you reach such independence.
Ancel: I can only talk about myself, but production of games can be very difficult, you face much pressure. On the one hand gamers want things they are familiar with, on the other hand they want to be surprised. These demands need to be aligned. That's similar to listening to the new album of your favourite band: If it sounds like the last album, it's boring. If it's sounds completely different, it's not what you expect that band to be. Thus you need to balance old and new ideas and concepts.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which was the last game that really surprised you?
Ancel: That might have been Limbo. Right now I'm anticipating The Last Guardian. And that's what I mean: We know something about that game's world as we've played Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Still, we want to be surprised. This is the type of game I want to make.
Games Ancel worked on in the last 10 years:
King Kong - 2005
Rayman 4 - Wii - transformed into Raving Rabbids minigame festival due to strict deadlines
Beyond Good & Evil 2 - PS3/Xbox 360 - On hold since 2009
Rayman Origins - PC/3DS/Xbox 360/PS3/Wii - 2011
