Cryptic Studios

Cryptic Studios is a leading developer of massively multiplayer online role playing games, with a reputation for delivering profitable, on-time and on-budget titles. Cryptic 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. After developing both City of Heroes and City of Villains, Cryptic was purchased by Atari and created Champions Online and Star Trek Online. Cryptic was acquired by Perfect World in August 2011 and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Perfect World. In addition to supporting Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter with new updates and content, Cryptic is now developing other unannounced projects. The company continues to rapidly diversify its portfolio of games with the aim of reaching beyond the traditional MMORPG genre. Cryptic Studios' development process is centered on efficiently structured teams working together in a collaborative atmosphere to develop high quality games. The goal is to deliver unparalleled gaming experiences that appeal to a wide range of audiences and to iterate based on early prototyping and vertical slices. Cryptic utilizes a proprietary 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 belief in balancing valuable family time with work provides a positive environment, promoting team work, creativity and the exchange of ideas and opinions.