A sad Farewell to americana and a word to linden Labs

Well Linden Labs I have a word of Advice for you . If you see something good happening then HELP OUT ! Otherwise people are gonna quit and then guess what ? You wont be able to pay your bills and Second Life will go the way of AMERICANA. Right into oblivion. I certainly dont want to see that do you ? Well Amreicana couldnt wait any longer.

I would suggest Linden Labs you take a long look at what you are doing . A long HARD look. Do you want to be here in a year ? If so then LISTEN . If not well then this will just be another good idea gone bad and Neither I or anyone else wants to see that . ! The rest is up to you ! Ill be watching.


Update:

NOTHING has changed
Goodbye second life!

Um, they did. It's called 1.1.

Thank you Regnar,


i know there are a lot of rumors floating around about why Americana closed up , but if you want to know the real story
feel free to see me in game and i will tell you why.


Americana Leader,
Ramon Kothari

Speaking as an individual, and not as an "official" representative for the group...

Time will tell whether this is truly the end of Americana.

It is absolutely true that many and perhaps all of the larger builds will have been removed by this time in anticipation of the revised tax bills, and many people, including myself, have released all or most of their land within the sim and staged the builds within inventories. That said, perhaps many of the builds and ideas will be moved, recreated once the changes have stabilized, or rebuilt for special occasions. These sort of questions yet remain.

This has been an ambitious effort of which I am proud to have been - and hope to remain - a part. It is my hope and wish that the group does survive - albeit in a manner which more befits our financial realities.

The talents and efforts put forth by this group have not been in vain. They have shown, to those who have been fortunate enough to see, a marvelous sampling of the kinds of creativity SL needs - the kind of creativity which drew me into SL in the first place.

Pardon us while we remodel to serve you better...

=Sinclair

As I understand it, Americana is disappearing because 7 people owned the majority of the sim. Naturally, that's cause for high taxes.

There has been and always will be ways of dealing with taxes, increasing stipend, and living comfortably. In short, the best way is to not live in excess. I'm not directing this -at all- to people in Americana because -in no way- do I understand or can fathom their costs, land ownership, etc. etc. I'm just saying... why are we always blaming taxes? They're there for a reason.

And from what I understand, Americana is gone "for now." Sounds like the Blue residents are thinking of ways to fix the current problem they are having. It really isn't the end of the world. Just a short hiatus in the world of Americana.

Second Life will flourish, I have no doubt about that; if people leave the game because of high taxes... then it's more like they faced a "Game Over." This is a game. The taxes keep the game functional. We are a community and we all have to abide by the same tax laws and stipend fixes. Governmental projects aside, what taxes are given to the owner of a 100x100parcel of land owner is justified--as explained over and over in the numerous SL Basics events and the Help notecards etc. that describe how the tax system works.

Edit: I didn't read Sinclair's post before, and I have to say--I really like the way you're handling the situation. I'm glad you aren't steaming from the ears about the circumstance and are awaiting new opportune moments for Americana to rise again. I agree, Americana is a true example of creative expression in Second Life. Cheers to you all.

I hope Americanians don't take this the wrong way.. but while the place was pretty, what was there to do there? I didn't see anything that ever made me want to stop..

Pirate

I also thank you Reg...and I thank everyone who supported Americana with kind words, votes, event attendance and "revolutionary" participation.

A lot of work went into Americana, as I'm sure was evident to all who visited. And by work, I mean WORK. Anyone get sick of The Sims because doing dishes and cleaning the toilet is too much like RL?

I have been in the game industry for about 10 years now, and what we did in Blue was not at all unlike what I get paid to do daily. And like so many smart, dedicated start-ups that died after the market crash and continue to dissapear today, Americana is not likely to return in the same form or with the same group of employees. Some will take this as a hard lesson and put FAR less RL blood sweat and tears into a "game" but some will consider it an opportunity to start again, all the wiser, somewhere else.

I love my Americana Family. Thank you SO MUCH for everything. And thank George for making it all possible. From the bottom of my tail, thank you for the community.

Fellow Founding Father,
-Flea




.....oh and if you never found anything to do in Americana, then you weren't looking very hard ;p

I thought 1.1 was supposed to bring a certain amount of releif from the high tax burden for themed sims, and make things easier for group builds in general. So if this is the case, then WHY did Americana go away the day b4 1.1 started? It wasn't even given a chance to see if it would help.

The word I have heard from my fellow friends in Americana, is that they could not absolutely hold on to things anylonger.


Plus noone was being helpful anymore.

there were supposedly 30+ people in the group but only 7 participated, once those 30+ people started seeing group taxes for americana start coming out of their income they would have quit the group and that would leave the burden on those hardworking 7.


Its funny how when you are working hard for members everyone wants to join to say they are part of something great but noone wants to help.

JV

I was there in the beginning, I was there at the end. Americana will live on in our hearts forever.

WTF??????
Is my disco ok??
What exactly do you people mean by Americana going under???
Is everything truly gone??
Jesus, I was donating 10k to americana every month, thats enough to support another 1/16th off of me alone. Why does no one ever tell me anything
Somebody hold some land for me, I wanna move the disco away from the sim border!

Eggy, your disco was alive and well last night, and not going public as far as I could see. Unlike the rest of Blue which is now a sorry sight

Whew! Thank god the disco is still there.
Well if Americana is truly gone then I no longer need to fit the theme and so I will be restructuring the place slightly.

See, Eggy, this is why we need you back and soon!!!!!!! Get that d*mn hard drive and come back to us!

Well, first off, this thread was started by a non-Americana member (Regnar) whio had some nice things to say, so I'd like to thank him, and any other well wishers who happened to stumble upon Americana and may be a little sorry to see it go.

For those of you who are taking this thread as an opportunity to flame our group and what we tried to accomplish, bear in mind that we were content to let Blue and Americana fade away, without any sweeping announcements or forum posts. So take a step back, and cut us some slack, as alot of people worked very hard on keeping what made the game fun for us afloat for as long as we could. And PirateCotton, while you are entitled to your opinion, honestly I've yet to see a 'Pirate Cotton' build in world that made me say 'Holy Crap, there's something to do there! Let me stop!'.

For my group members (especially the hard working, dedicated core- you know who you are) I want to thank all of you for making Americana a fun, memorable experience. Geo would be proud, and we should be too.

For everyone else- Americana may be dead, but the spirit lives on... Fanway Park may rise again


-Bonecrusher Slate

-Builder of Fanway Park, The Chinese Theater, and Americana Studios

Its sometimes sad to see builds leave the world, maybe more dramatic when it is an entire theme. But, its the nature of the game, things come and go. The world is constantly changing, celebrate that. Enjoy the present and take lots of pictures.

LOL!
Bone, that was a sad post if I ever saw one.
Pirate Cotton is already one of SL's greatest and most creative players, even though he is still a noob, and the secret project we are working on will soon make you eat your words, and provide many hours of entertainment for everyone

Have I mentioned lately that I'm happy that your hard drive is broken Eggy?

-Bone

Eggy's over-egging it a bit.. (haha, see what I did there)?

Er, I didn't mean to dig so much.. I guess I just honestly don't know what americana was all about.. perhaps that was the problem? Did other noobs like me? Perhaps I shouldn't have asked on a thread where people were obviously a bit sad (as would I be should all my work be forced to vanish).

I've flown by of course, admired the architecture (I love that people take the time to make stuff and add the detail that was there like the dinner and the gas station) but I guess I didn't kinda see why I should do more than admire it in passing? I guess I'm not a huge socialiser so I like to tinker with stuff at locations like LW or to check out shops and so on but I don't recall anything inviting me to tinker or shop.

Of course, they could have been there but perhaps they weren't advertised?

I'm actually mildly curious because I do think the place was fun.

I shouldn't post when tired and in a rush

Pirate
(Head of secret project X, lol)

This seams to be a recuring problem with the theamed sims. [So far] Any time you try to get a group of 10+ set on a theame and actualy put some work into it all but <10 suddenly dissapear and your stuck with your 7 ish people struggling to keep up the dream.

This is what has happend to Little Tokyo, for the majority of the time there were a total of 7 'active' members who were actualy building, discussing, eventing(?) and generaly participating in the group. Many people joined or expressed interest but a majority of them did a little bit and then dissapeared or never actualy stuck around long enough to join.

As far as taxes go, I wont comment other than to say that we had LONG drawn out discussions on how to keep LT's taxes down and never put up some of our dreams due to infeasibly high taxes.

I hope that Americana can pick itself up and put itself back together, you guys had a great thing going. Lets hope this isnt so much a death of Americana but a slow time before some renisance.

I was not part of americana but I had several friends there that were busting thier humps to make it work and it s a tragedy that it had to fall to the way side like many other famous builds.

I know how they felt though I had to suck in and take a big breath when I put big red back in my inventory and I don't have a themed community to take over and assist on taxation each week that was lost on me several months back.

What was mentioned earlier is true about groups and deeded land and objects. Hence my previous post about eliminating all my groups. I like many others would not want to reap the rewards or take the liabilitys for a group project that we really have no say or do in.

Well I will talk to you all latter.

Shadow

Hrm, intresting thought. I better take a look at my groups and see what people are doing, Don't need somone to go get obnoxious and try to buy a whole bunch of stuff and try to charge its taxes to some joke group. Thow I may stay in some groups like americana to help out (As long as it dosnt put me under due to taxes).

Pirate, don't feel bad about not knowing what Americana was about, because even I didn't know what it was about... I know what it was SUPPOSED to be about, bu what it became... eh... I dunno. I guess I'm kinda glad to see it go down with wishes of someday returning, because if they'd (I say they'd, because I'd given up about 3 weeks before the downfall... at least publicly) tried to hold on much longer... just... bad... yes bad. I still love everyone who was a part of the initial team, and to the few who actually tried to keep Americana as the dream George wanted it to be. Those who were there from the very beginning know what I'm talking about...

Ramon, thanks for holding the billions of $L of taxes, and being the longest lasting leader (and disproving the Americana leader curse)

Bone, thanks for taking up the slack when I fell behind and thanks for being one of the last who remembered the true ideal of Americana

Sin, um... thanks for letting me kill Betty

Oda, thanks for taking the blame

Gah... Blue holds a lot of memories... as does that spot in Zoe... I'm just sorry that the brightest time for Americana was before it was actually realized. Ah well... it's been... um... real...

When I was in Blue last, there was a lot of bits of Americana left over, and the people buying up the land had to get rid of it themselves.

I didn't know the SL disco was in Americana. Now I know why people thought I meant your Disco whenever I complained about the Disco near my house in Mocha.

I was actually complaining about Rick Murray's disco, actually.

Thank you for the kind words Dio , Flea ,Bone, J V and anyone else that i forgot ...
as it has been metioned by previous posts it was not all taxes that lead us to the conclusion that it was time to tear down and re think and re evaluate how things were going
On paper we have 30+ members but not everyone was active ( for what ever reason which is none of my or anyone elses bussiness ) those of us that were left had a VERY large responsibility to shoulder trying to keep things appear as though nothing was wrong, when deep down we were losing our collective shirts trying to keep everything up .
and as a collective group ( those that were left and were active with group functions) we decided that instead of prolonging the agony to call it "game over"

Now everyone may think it was a very unrational decision to end the night before 1.1 but let me just say the decision was not made lightly it was discussed over and over again and we felt there was no other way for all of us to regain enough funds to carry on .

You might be saying and we have heard it before "got to start out small and grow bigger as funds permit " well guess what we did when we started we had 30 + members shouldering the burden and in the end we had maybe 8 people to do the same as 30 .. and i know we could have deeded everything to the group but guess what i am sure that the same small group of people would have had the same burden.
So why didnt we condense things down ?
could you have picked what stayed and what didnt ? we couldnt so we chose to end the theme. Now someday and I myself hope its sooner rather than later may rebuild and who knows we may come back better than we ever where before ,only time will tell . as a group we will stay together as and there will be other projects from the group, just right now americana needed to end


So you all can flame away now , i have spoken my peace and will slowly fade off into the sunset .

Long live Americana

I hope you all find a fun new project to join

Pirate