Nice Gamer Gary was created by the owner of Negative World on Meme Generator in early 2012 as a video-game oriented play on the popular character Good Guy Greg. He quickly became a hit and 100s of images were created. He blew up even more in July from a Tumblr post that received over 10,000 reblogs and likes, although he was incorrectly referred to as Good Gamer Gary (as he often is elsewhere.) He has also spread to 9 Gag, Funny Junk, Add Funny, among others.

The original description of Nice Gamer Gary is as follows:

Nice Gamer Gary is an all-around decent guy who loves his video games. When he games with others he works hard to make sure that they feel loved and respected.

The meme often plays upon the idea of a gamer who is nice to a ridiculous degree. This can be both in how he acts in real life (such as turning off games to talk to his girlfriend), or how he acts in games (such as stopping at red lights in Grand Theft Auto.)