We spent a little bit of time discussing the rise of ActiveWorlds and their eventual departure. This was the only time during our interview that I could sense some uneasiness between us. To their credit, both Britvich and Viescas were cordial and sympathetic while explaining the reasons they were unable to shed much light on their leaving ActiveWorlds. In short, a legal agreement between the parties involved ordered that the terms not be disclosed. Britvich was able to tell me that he was not happy with the direction that ActiveWorlds Inc., was taking the project and was unable to affect the changes he would have liked. In the end, he and Viescas agreed that the best thing for them was to walk away from the company.

Roderick Moyes: "How did AW live up to your expectations, was as successful as you thought it would be?"

Ron Britvich: "I actually thought it would probably be more successful than it was. Part of the problem though, was that the company expected it to be ten times more successful than it was. I knew that was never going to happen. I think the fundamental flaw of the management was that once you begin to take too much control over something, where do you stop? You're basically trying impose your standards on everyone else. Your standards may be great, but they may not be too."

Danny Viescas: "Ron put in this cool functionality to take an object and put it image on it like a jpeg or gif… as soon as he did that, what do you expect is going to happen? People started putting up porn and stuff… So, we could go and say no porn, but that would be imposing our morality on the whole community. So, instead we just say… you're accountable for what ever you do. So really, it's much more of a consensus you know, if the community says hey, I'm your neighbor and you have porno and I don't like it, if you like it, that's fine, but I have my house right here… then, the community gets together and starts talking about it. That was our view, we don't care what people do…"

RB: "I wanted to encourage people to try every form of government, you know, monarchies, dictatorships, chaos, democracies… whatever, and discover the things they prefer."