Cryptic Studios is a leading independent developer of massively-multiplayer online role playing games, with a reputation for delivering profitable, on-time, on-budget titles. They developed the innovative and successful City of Heroes, as well as its subsequent expansion, City of Villains. Both titles garnered numerous awards from leading enthusiast press including GameSpy's Game of the Year award in 2004.

Cryptic Studios' development process is centered on efficiently structured teams working together in a collaborative atmosphere to develop high quality games. Their goal is to deliver an unparalleled gaming experience appealing to a wide range of audiences. As an independent developer, Cryptic has the freedom to choose projects they are passionate about, based on genres and IP they know and love. Cryptic's belief in balancing valuable family time with work provides a positive environment, promoting team work, creativity, and the exchange of ideas and opinions.

Cryptic utilizes a proprietary MMO engine that contains all the tools needed to efficiently build and operate massive online games. Developed in house, the engine continues to be upgraded and adjusted by its original creators to improve the engine's versatility and functionality. In addition, Efficient content generation tools have been incorporated to streamline the development process, allowing real time testing of art assets within the game environment.

Cryptic's design process revolves around the vital question, "What is fun?" The close-knit team addresses this question at each stage of development, ensuring the creation of innovative, challenging and fun games. A solid foundation of efficient development tools allows Cryptic to focus on what they do best, creating games that break the boring, hardcore, high time commitment stereotypes of MMOG's. They are dedicated to building strong player communities, and developing challenging yet accessible games with deep and enjoyable gameplay.