John Needham brings years of business development and financial experience in the entertainment and gaming industries to Cryptic Studios. A graduate of San Diego State University, John began his career at Arthur Anderson and Co. John later held several positions in the television division at Sony Pictures Entertainment, including director of corporate development and vice president of finance for Telemundo Networks. Moving to Sony Online Entertainment in 2001, John served as senior vice president of business development, focusing on international expansion and the formation of a cross-platform publishing, distribution and marketing label. He later managed business development, strategic initiatives, international operations, customer service and quality assurance for SOE as senior vice president of business development and operations. At Cryptic, John provides executive leadership to all departments and will guide the company as it expands from a development house to an international publisher of MMOGs.

Jack Emmert is a longtime gamer and comic book aficionado. His first foray into gaming was, of course, Dungeons & Dragons®. His professional career in the hobby game industry started at a comic book store in the outskirts of Philadelphia, Showcase Comics. He earned his first Master's degree (Ancient History) from the University of Chicago, and his second Master's degree from Ohio State University. During this period Jack also wrote supplements for a variety of gaming lines, including Deadlands, Hell on Earth, DC Universe and Marvel Superheroes. He left academia in July 2000 to co-found Cryptic Studios, and design the hit MMOG City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Hindol Datta brings almost 17 years of experience in accounting, finance, systems, strategy and operations. He earned his Masters' degrees in Applied Economics and Accounting from California State University, and Engineering Economics from California Institute of Technology. He has worked as vice president of finance and operations and director of finance and business intelligence for the last eight years in some of the largest internet online and media distribution companies. He was one of the earliest employees and a key contributor to Adteractive's successful run as one of the fastest growing companies in the online advertising marketplace in the US, overseeing the operations and finance as the company profitably grew from $15M to $150M in revenues in less than two years. Prior to internet marketing, he worked as Director of Strategic Planning in mobile telecommunications and Operations Controller in a medical device company which was acquired by the Great Nordic Group. He started his career in small accounting firms, and later worked as auditor and systems analyst in Coopers & Lybrand and Andersen Consulting respectively. He is a CPA in the State of California, a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA).

Bill Roper has been a well-known figure in the worldwide gaming industry for 15 years. He personally represents the games he works on to the global gaming community and has built a solid reputation on his strong relationships with press, developers and gamers.

From 1994 to 2003, Bill produced numerous million-selling games and played a key role in the success of the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo series. He oversaw and managed all external projects, coordinated internal development teams, and headed Blizzard's strike teams where he was instrumental in shaping the direction of the games. In 2003, Bill left Blizzard Entertainment to co-found Flagship Studios and Ping0 where he assumed the role of CEO. In less than five years the companies developed, released and operated their first online game, Hellgate: London, and had a second game, Mythos, in development.

Bill joined Cryptic Studios in November 2008 as Design Director. He is serving as the Executive Producer for Cryptic’s highly anticipated title, Champions Online.

For the past sixteen years Shannon Posniewski has engineered and developed software for a number of technology companies. Beginning as a software engineer for Image Systems Technology, Shannon eventually moved to MapInfo Corporation for a project integrating the MapInfo software (the first PC-based geographic information system) with Microsoft Excel.

Shannon later joined Stellar Semiconductor, a 3D graphics technology startup. There, as both a software and hardware engineer, he helped invent and implement highly-efficient 3D graphic systems. Stellar was acquired by Broadcom Corp, where Shannon led development of cable set-top box software and hardware.

At Cryptic Studios, Shannon designed and implemented many of the game systems for City of Heroes and City of Villains. Now, as director of game programming, he oversees the design and development of all game systems in Cryptic projects.

Craig studied interdisciplinary science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he focused on mathematics, biology, literature and art. After graduating in 1993, he began his career as a software programmer for MapInfo, where he specialized in application software. Craig soon moved to Stellar Semiconductor, where he developed 3D graphics drivers and helped optimize games for Stellar's hardware. After Broadcom acquired Stellar, he worked to port graphics drivers and games to Broadcom's cable set-top boxes.

Craig found his true calling at Cryptic Studios, where he has successfully tackled a number of crucial tasks. He was one of the designers of City of Heroes, and then played a key role in that game's development by coordinating the work of the software, art and design teams. As producer for both City of Heroes and City of Villains, Craig guided both titles to on-time, on-budget launches. His deep knowledge and technical experience now help him to oversee all development aspects of Cryptic's projects.