Article:
Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem

Main Entry: cryp•tic
Pronunciation: \'krip-tik\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin crypticus, from Greek kryptikos, from kryptos
Date: circa 1638
1 : SECRET, OCCULT
2 a : having or seeming to have a hidden or ambiguous meaning : MYSTERIOUS
b : marked by an often perplexing brevity
3 : serving to conceal
4 : not recognized
5 : employing cipher or code

Looking through the Merriam-Webster definition of the word "cryptic", I couldn't help but feel that the MMO developer Cryptic Studios picked a most suitably precise moniker. When it comes to the gaming industry, we the gamers tend to have a very long memory. Gamers, especially MMO-ers, are many things... however forgiving is, often, not one of them. Developers need to work hard to repair tarnished reputations and even then are often met with criticism – as an example, Funcom's considerable efforts into revamping their flagship MMO Age of Conan from its rocky beginnings seem to be gleefully ignored as any new presentation concerning their upcoming Cthulu-lite MMO The Secret World is commonly met with the resounding leering of “FAILCOM! FAILCOM! FAILCOM!” from the basement-dwelling lynch mob, even before it has seen the light of day.

So it seems inconceivable to me that a MMO developer, principally Cryptic Studios - who previously has experience parleying with the genre faithful from their City of Heroes days - can be so heedlessly willing to antagonize this callously unforgiving group.

And antagonize they have. That's why I've chosen the peculiar title - A Pre Post-Mortem - for this article. The CSI fanatics out there definitely know what I mean, but for the rest, I'm essentially saying that I believe Cryptic Studios will be dissolved in the following few years and the remnants of the shell will be absorbed and distributed internally across Atari's many development houses.

In other words, I expect Cryptic to follow in the footsteps of Sigil Games (the now nearly defunct developers of Vanguard), Mythic Entertainment (to be fair Mythic is still around in some capacity, but I also expect this developer to fold either this year or the next with the majority of positions being made redundant and the few remaining being absorbed by Bioware), and Destination Games (the now dissolved developer of Tabula Rasa).