Gibby

When I was a kid, my parents bought me this very obscure educational game for our crappy Windows 98 computer. Even though the game itself was obscure, it was rather fun. In the game, you do jobs in a city-like place that kids would know about, like a firefighter, a doctor, a construction worker, and etc. The game requires you to use math and language arts skills to complete each job and earn points where you can buy clothes and decorations for a house that you can live in (which was another cool feature for the game). My parents bought the game hoping that if I learned how math and language arts can be used in real life, then I would do better in school and do better as an adult. And, in all honesty, it kind of worked.

Even though I enjoyed the game however, there was one thing in the game that always got to me, Gibby. Gibby was an NPC within the game that was supposed to act as the comic relief, but he would just come on screen, say some retarded thing, and would then get injured in a slapstick style, but turn out uninjured. Another odd thing about Gibby was his design. Gibby was a circular man, and by circular, I mean a complete circle with arms, he also resembled a French chef with gray hair and a white chef's outfit, he also had an apron along with a short chef's hat. Gibby also had a elderly voice with a British accent (which surprised me since he was supposed to be a FRENCH chef).

The game also had a feature where you can talk to the NPCs, or citizens, by typing in whatever you want in a text box. You would usually get a randomly chosen response, but sometimes, you would get strange responses that have nothing to do with your question. I'm bringing this up because I used this feature with Gibby. I asked him a few questions, getting the strange, unrelated responses that the game usually gives you sometimes. Then, I asked him...

"What are you doing here?"

I don't know why I decided to ask this, in fact, I still don't understand why I asked this. However, what Gibby responded with disturbed my childish mind...

"Now, now... we don't have to ask TOO many questions".

I was utterly shocked by this response, and what's odd is that instead of sounding unrelated, it sounded like he knew what I just said, almost as if the programmers made this a response that the character would say when this was asked, but why? Why did the programmers make THIS a response? An easter egg maybe? I decided to ask Gibby the same question again, but I was greeted with the same response. I thought it was useless to ask the question over and over again, so I stopped asking.

As I grew up, I stopped playing the game and moved on, I got good grades, graduated college, and got a job as an insurance agent. The game popped in my head recently after visiting my family and finding a box with the old computer and the games with it, like Doom, Half Life, and many more. But then, I discovered the game, I also saw the game's title, "You & The Big City". A tsunami of memories hit me when I saw the box, but I was disappointed when I noticed that the disc was not in the box. But still, I was thrilled that I saw the game.

Later when I went back home, I logged onto a gaming forum and made a discussion about the game, its obscurity, and "Gibby". Most of the responses talked about how they never heard of the game, while some talked about how they remembered the game and how fun it was, but those responses also talked about how there was no character called Gibby and asked me what character I was referring to. I was confused by these responses and thought the people who responded lied about playing the game.

Trying to confirm that there was an NPC named Gibby that was in the game, I researched it a bit and found an email address of a programmer who worked on the game. I sent him an email talking about how I loved the game as a child and if there was a character in the game called "Gibby", I also described the character to his entirety. About an hour later, the programmer replied to my email, this is what he said...

"Dear _____, I would like to thank you for enjoying the game as a kid, it's the least I could do! But about this "Gibby" character you speak of, I don't know what you're talking about. There was no plan for this character to be made and put into the game. I would say that your game was modded in some way, but that would be impossible since the game had no modding feature, and the code of the game could not be accessed by anyone, also, since the game wasn't our most popular, the code could not have been leaked on the internet at anytime. I have no clue as to what you're talking about, but I hope there is a reason for this... Sincerely, Kevin ________: programmer of ________ Games".

So that leaves me with what I'm asking you... Who did I see in that game?...