![]() ![]() StarCraft’s widespread popularity made it the first place many gamers experienced the term GG, using it to admit defeat or compliment their opponent for a well-fought battle. StarCraft sold 1.5 million copies worldwide during its first year and remained one of the most popular online games in the world a decade after its launch, with over 9.5 million sales around the globe by 2011. In 1998, Blizzard Entertainment released the real-time strategy game StarCraft, which is widely accepted as the title that propelled GG into the mainstream. But in only a few years’ time, those numbers quickly escalated as people began adopting the internet for work, communication, and, of course, gaming. households owned computers back then, according to the Census Bureau. Writer John Brandon encountered the acronym playing Marathon on his Macintosh in 1994, a first-person shooter developed by Bungie before Halo: Combat Evolved. Blizzard Entertainment The origins of GGĮarly uses of GG date back to the mid-to-late ‘90s when local-area network (LAN) multiplayer gaming began to lay the roots for full-fledged online games. How a friendly gamer term turned into gamers' favorite sarcastic smack talk. Even though the phrase began as a mannerly way to say goodbye to an online video game opponent, it had rude connotations even during its inception for the simple reason that gamers hate to lose and love to win. This two-pronged definition of GG isn’t anything new. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, the rush of finally finishing a project you’ve been working on for months. ![]() It’s a reference to the feeling you get when you text the wrong person an embarrassing message. Over the years, GG evolved into a catch-all phrase to describe the culmination of an activity that there’s no coming back from, like a figurative “Game Over” screen or credit roll. But despite its origins as a polite expression of sportsmanship, real-world use of GG has become something a little less friendly and a lot more sarcastic. Today, the phrase is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon commonly used outside of the realm of consoles and monitors. For almost three decades, typing those letters into the game chat has become an almost compulsory act of digital sportsmanship. Like a virtual fist bump, “good game” (or “GG”) has been a favorite parting word since the dawn of online competitive gaming. If you've ever been called intense by a coworker and wondered whether that was a good thing or a bad thing you know what a backhanded compliment can feel like - and the world of gaming is no different. Words that start out as insults become compliments, and friendly comments can hide cruelty. The line between compliment and insult is a lot thinner than it may seem. ![]()
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