Two years, one month, and three weeks ago, Citizen-132 was conceived. Alf-Life and I spent an entire night brainstorming the concept, and we produced a 15 page document, outlining the entire game from start to finish. At first, we had planned to keep it Single-Player only, and about 6 months later, it was decided to add a Multi-Player Portion.

Work began on the mod in February 2003. We were working on a Half-Life 1 Mod. A few maps were being made, and a website was produced which drew quite a lot of attention to us. To our disbelief, Half-Life 2 was announced only a couple months later, with a release date of September 30th, 2003 only a few months ahead! We got very excited, and another hundred mods popped up, each sporting their own concepts and ideas.

We waited for HL2, and when September 30th rolled around, nothing was released. This sort of shocked us, but quickly decided that while we waited for HL2, we could make a HL1 demo to show the public what we were capable of. Many maps were created by our talented mapping staff, however, we never really got close to a release back then.

A very progressive member joined the mod around that time. His mod had been shutdown by the team leader, and he was eager to work. It seemed like a good idea to put him in the top leadership at that time, however, it quickly became apparent to me that he had an alternative agenda. He was power hungry, and in fact pushed my former Co-Team leader out of his position by pissing him off, calling him, quite immaturely and without true reason, a 'cunt.'

This progressive member had only one aspiration, which was to get his models in-game, so he could get an industry job. As a 26 year old man, without much of a life besides his work, he forced his opinions, work-ethic, and style onto everyone on the team. Team members often came to me expressing their discontent, and many left because of him. To his credit, he did add a few people to our team, and did submit quite a few models, however, they were never able to be rigged because of the way they were built. Eventually, before we had planned on removing him from the team, he himself quit. It was quite a relief for me, but his entire reign in the team made me hate working on Citizen-132 a lot more. From the time he joined, it started going downhill for ME there.

For those of you who don't know me, I am a 17 year old American living over in Europe. I have a multitude of talents, as well as a very involved social life, so Citizen-132 was one out of many things I did every day. Therefore, I could not focus 100% of my time into it, although I did manage over an hour of work a day specifically for it. As time went on, my lust to work on the mod went down, and i had less and less time that i wanted to spend working on it.

With the release of Far-Cry, this progressive member pushed us into moving over, and switching engines. My heart wasn't completely in Far-Cry from the start, because I didn't like the community, and wasn't really up to getting myself used to it. I had always been a Half-Life guy, and in-fact, when I got HL1 many many years ago, I never changed games or community. It was an unwelcome shock for me to be working with Far-Cry and their split community. We stayed working with Far-Cry for over 6 months, and then moved back to HL2 when its release became more imminent.

Now that HL2 is out, we've made quite a few maps, have some models in-game, but we don't have the manpower, nor do we have the time, or energy to continue. When you invest over 2 years of your time into something and get little result out of it, one's energy to continue begins to disappear.

It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to shutdown Citizen-132.

I have learned so much about people, computers and games through working on Citizen-132. I have met the greatest person in the world, my best friend, Shaun "Epit0miz3" Belcher, who will continue to stay my friend until our death. I hung out with him in Boston, he came all the way to Europe to spend time with me, and we've built a very strong friendship, all thanks to Citizen-132. I have been published in 3 print magazines, interviewed by 7 websites, and interviewed by an internet radio with a hundred-thousand listeners. I've learned a lot about myself, about leadership, and about organization. I've become a better writer, and I've learned what I want to focus on in University in a year.

I know that many people are going to be disappointed. I want to thank all of our diehard and long time fans. Copet, you've been our number one fan for a long-ass time, thank you. Eurofighter, thank you for your never ending support. AA-Engrossed, you're contributions have been immense, thank you. To those i have forgot to mention, I have not forgot in my mind, and I thank you all.

Thank you to the numerous publications who have supported and interviewed us: PlanetHalfLife, HL2Central (old staff), BeyondHalfLife, Halflife-Mods, Halflife2net, Half-life-Radio, PC-Gamer USA, PC-Gamer UK, PC-Games Germany, Ubi-Soft... you've all done wonders for us.

Thank you to my team members of the past and present. Without you guys we would have never made it this far. Some notable people:

Alf-Life: Helped me write the original concept

Crazy-MAC: Our first web-page

Taco-241: A huge ammount of concept art and design support

Snozzle: A lot of early models done by him, helped us survive in the early days.

DaanO: Design work, couldn't have done it without you

KingKong: THE BEST WEAPON MODELER IN THE WORLD, your work ethic and loyalty are going to take you places.

Pariah223: Although you were relatively new, you caught on quickly and worked extremely hard, and I am very grateful.

Evert: This is the best Half-Life 1 mapper to ever walk the planet. He is uncontested.

Again, I am sorry to those I forgot, but these are the people who stick out to me.

Most importantly, I want to thank Epit0miz3. This is a guy who works his ass off every damn day. He cared more about Citizen-132 than everyone else put together, and it was hard for him and I to make this decision to end it. He deserves as many kudos as I for what we've done with Citizen-132.

We are releasing everyone's NDAs and Contracts, effective on April 15th, 2005. You may use any work that you created in other mods, all we ask is that you credit back to Citizen-132 somehow. Thanks, we want to be a legacy .

You can send all hate mail to smurray@citizen-132.com .

Thank you all for a fun ride,

Stephen "the_s-man" Murray