Why is this not OK? Seems fine to me. Someone gg’ed me in the middle of a game recently and I took it to mean “this is an interesting (i.e. good) game”
Sure. This is definitely not OK. But I don’t think that someone typing gg means they are trying to pressure the other player to resign.
All this reminds me of Gandalf when Bilbo says “good morning” at the start of The Hobbit…
Gandalf: “What do you mean? Do you wish me a good game, or mean that it is a good game whether I want it or not; or that you feel good about this game; or that it is a game to be good at? … What a lot of things you do use good game for! Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.”
(… and cue memes!)
This was well done! Kudos
GG
So basically like my 5-year old, who, when he finally manages to solve a tough task, always says “Das war ja easy-peasy!” as if it had never been a real challenge to him. 
Go predates online gaming a few thousand years 
HOWEVER, since we all want to encourage new players on OGS and we all want OGS to grow [citation needed]), and many new players are just starting with go but may be used to other online games conventions (especially in the west), I think it is best to reduce ambiguity since as said before, “gg” means different things in different communities. I always use either “Have a nice game” or “Have a good game” at the beginning, the full phrase, which has a clear meaning. Similarly I end with “Thank you for the game”.
I recommend avoiding “gg” at all because in many e-sports and gaming communities, “gg” is not really synonymous with “good game”, as it carries a lot of extra connotation. It is used as a “technical” term or a “specific” word itself, “gg”, different from its origin “good game”. Similar to how in go we use “eyes” as a technical term with a specific meaning. The term literally means “each of a pair of globular organs of sight in the head of humans and vertebrate animals”, or anything resembling that. But when speaking of eyes, we use it as a technical specific go term quite different from the literal meaning.
In particular in Age of Empires 2 (and many other similar competitive games as far as I know, but this is the one I do know ) you never see people typing “good game” or saying “good game” like this when playing, they always use “gg” during the game. And the way it works is: the player who is going to resign says “gg”, or “gg wp” right before resigning. The other player acknowledges this by also answering “gg”, meanwhile the player who said “gg” first will be resigning. Saying “gg” first and not resigning would be a serious breach of etiquette that I do not remember seeing at all, just like saying “ok well played, I resign” on chat, while still continuing the game without resigning.
Note that when speaking out loud on stream, people often read the phrase “gg wp” that as “gg [gee gee] well played”, not as “good game well played”, further emphasizing that “gg” really feels like a separate, indivisible new word with a different meaning than a literal “good game”, while “wp” works much more similar to the actual “well played” phrase, as a normal abreviation.
In fact it also works the other way around, abbreviating a normal “good game” (the English words) as “gg” sounds bad. For example when commenting about a previous AOE2 game, if instead of saying “Yeah that game by Viper was such a good game, I enjoyed watching it”, someone said “Yeah that game by Viper was such a gg, I enjoyed watching it”, the meaning I hear is totally different. The first one means the normal English meaning, but the second one sounds to me something like “yeah in that game, the situation was such that the only thing to do is resign [“throw the gg in chat”]”, which sounds strange and if intended, is a totally different meaning.
The point is: “gg” has a very specific meaning in other games, it is NOT just the same as “good game”. I recommend avoiding it, as the “gg” abbreviation is not something that go players have been using for hundreds of years, like say, the word “Atari”.
Well said, I agree with this point.
But unfortunately we have to tell this the young professionals, wo obviously also play a lot of computer games and use the phrase often even in their comments about other games.
They have a large impact and of course a lot of authority. So they help to spread the use of gg even in unclear situations.
That may have been the intent, or may have been generous of you.
The world would certainly be a nicer place if everyone were that generous.
I guess it was a mistake of me to write as I did, implying that it’s a rule, just like that no nuance.
Nothing is ever that simple.
But the times that I see “gg” mid game are of course almost exclusively when it’s reported, and in those cases is is almost exclusively not at an interesting point in the game - rather it’s usually when the winner clearly thinks the game is over.
I do really like the advice to respond with “Thx U2”.
Strangely no-one "gg"s me in the middle of a game 
Maybe my games are just boring
“He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.”
― Brigham Young
Just remembered this one (even better I think):
I wish you double of what you wish me 
My opponents who gg me in the middle of the game do so after killing one of my groups.
gg
thx! u2!
Yep. And that’s how long works and evolves.
The motivation for my OP was to see where we were at in that process in the OGS community with regards to the evolution of the connotation/ meaning of ‘gg’
For example FTW was a very well established acronym before online gaming. But the younger generations will assume it only ever meant “for the win”
If it helps the conversation: gg, pronounced “jeejee” is children’s slang for horse😅
Ooo - so another for the repetoire
gg
giddyap!
Not to be confused with “the gee-gees” being horse racing and gambling thereon and so not for children…
If we are going in this direction, “GG” is also a common abbreviation in the U.S. for great-grandma (or -pa, but I have heard it applied usually to women, perhaps because women live longer).
The failure of transmission of folk language or specialized jargon is commonplace today, so it is dangerous to use anything like that in mixed company. Indeed, a great deal of traditional culture in general is not being passed on. I think Ortega y Gassett, in Revolt of the Masses, may have been the first to notice this, which he attributed to the enormous population explosion starting with the industrial revolution. Today the effect seems to be accelerating, and other reasons, too obvious to belabor, are playing a part. There was a great deal of continuity in cultural transmission of childhood games and lore, for example, between my parents’ generation, raised in the 1930s, and my generation (the 60s). Hardly any of this culture is extant today in my daughter’s generation and even among those somewhat older than her.
gg
“Who you callin’ a granma??!!” Reported!
I have gg’d in the passing phase when I THOUGHT the game was over. I prefer to think the best of my opponents. I gg in good faith. I assume my opponent is doing the same.
I don’t think anyone is likely to be offended by a ‘gg’ after at least one player has passed.
Despite all the jovial discussion here, I can tell you that people DO get offended by ‘gg’ mid-game, and I would ask you all to be considerate of this interpretation even if it’s not what you mean, and instead of ‘gg’ mid-game, actually say what you mean.
