For more than 3 billion years, biological evolution has guided the colonization of our planet by living organisms. Evolution’s rules are simple: creatures that adapt to threats and master the evolutionary game thrive; those that don’t become extinct.

Just how much “mastery” has been involved in my ability to dodge an evolutionary bullet is certainly an open question but none the less, I am still in the game well beyond my projected “use by date” and at 62 years old, show no signs of “going bad” anytime soon.

My point being this: to avoid self-extinction, we must develop some level of awareness that we are at risk in the first place, some way to "change the nature of the outcome." The bargain is just that simple: if we do, we survive, if we don't, we disappear. So we elder statesmen must find a way stay relevant, and if it does not exist yet, create it.

Adapt or die becomes much more meaningful when you realize that the work you have taken on has lost its momentum and that the necessary internal support continues evaporating at an alarming rate. This, then, is my humble recitation of fact concerning my own evolutionary trajectory. A trajectory that has been, and I am being generous here, erratic, convoluted and not without some level of discomfort and distress.

Believing that the inappropriate sports metaphor is always the perfect foil for the lack of a well turned phrase, it was late in the second half of my career and the “big momentum” had taken a turn for the worse. Funding for the Xbox Entertainment Network was eroding, a fact that certainly took the shine off my position as the creative director for the project. My boss and I were struggling with communication issues and the remaining champion for my work had run out of places to hide our budget from the business guys. My prospects began to mirror those of a mastodon, trunk and tusks to the rapidly chilling wind. It was time, it seemed to adapt or die.

Fast forward to June, 2005, Fort Bragg, Georgia. My wife and I are struggling with the heat and the stresses of watching our 24 year old son, a freshly minted Second Lieutenant in the Army, make his qualifying jumps to complete his Airborne training. My cell phone rings. It is Hank Howie, the President of Blue Fang Games in Boston, MA. The conversation sounds something like this.

“ J.D., it's Hank Howie, what are you up to?” I tell him where I am and what I am doing.
“ Interesting”, says Hank. “Say, what do you think about coming out to Boston for a chat?” And that, my friends, is what it sounds like when the adapt or die doorway opens unexpectedly.