Like Sony, which has spent more than four years building EverQuest II, set for a November debut, Cryptic is designing another game, called City of Villains, while the heroes are hot.

FORBES: Ordinary Hero

Pete Daly, of distributors Pathe, says Essex Boys is a film noir, with elements of Goodfellas, but in this case instead of the gangsters moving out from New York City to suburban New Jersey, the villains have relocated from the East End to its Essex hinterland.

BBC: Truth is stranger than fiction

"On the surface it looks very nice to say we need to catch villains, " said Margaret Berger, a professor at the Brooklyn College of Law in New York City.

CNN: State DNA laws help fight crime, but critics cite privacy concerns