Gib (video gaming)

Gibs, short for giblets (pronounced "jibs"), is a humorous term referring to the variably-sized body parts ("guts"), fragments, and offal produced when non-player characters or game players are damaged or killed in video games. According to John Romero in IGN's interview, Adrian Carmack has been credited for coining the term "gibs". To "gib" one's opponents is to hit them with such force (often with explosives) that they rupture.

Gibs feature prominently in many shooter games where gameplay generally focuses on killing large numbers of enemies. One of the first games in which gibs appeared was Narc (1988), although they were also a feature of the pioneering first-person shooter Doom (1993) and have been a mainstay of gaming titles ever since.

The use of "gib" is reserved for instances when a game character has been killed with such force that their body is reduced to chunked body parts, and perhaps a slurry of flesh and blood. In some games, the resulting gibs disappear after a short period to improve game performance by decreasing the number of objects that the game engine must render.

As well as describing the fragments as gibs, the word may be used as a verb, and killing a game character in this manner is to "gib" them. "Gib", and the related term "frag", are most commonly used in multiplayer deathmatches, where human player characters primarily kill one another rather than non-player characters. Introduced first in Unreal Tournament, some games feature an Instagib gameplay mod or mutator in which a hit on an opponent results in instantaneous "gibbing". When a "gibbing" happens in the past tense it is known as being "gibbed" (e.g., "He got gibbed!").

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