What is the origin of the PBBG acronym?
The PBBG acronym was coined and first defined by The PBBG Project in January 20071.
The creator of The PBBG Project noted that they had created several games as well as a large directory specializing in PBBGs2 and, although they did not explicitly link them from The PBBG Project website, they did link it in the header3 on their Top Web Games (TWG) directory.
Who was behind The PBBG Project?
While the website itself kept the owner anonymous, the TWG directory was owned and operated at the time by an Aaron Goertzen4; the TWG site only listed an "A. GOERTZEN," however emails to the owner returned the following message containing an automated verification:
This is a one-time automatic response to your email to Aaron Goertzen.
Who exactly came up with the PBBG acronym?
To be very explicit, Aaron Goertzen was responsible not only for coining and defining the PBBG acronym but also for helping to proliferate it by offering incentives5 to those in the space by using the term on their own games and websites.
What terms and acronyms were used beforehand?
The most common acronyms or terms in use prior to the coining of PBBG were things like "browser-based game," "browser game," "web game," and others such as "MMO," "MMORPG," etc.
The issue with these terms, as described in the original PBBG Project website, is that they are once again much broader and do not necessarily encompass what was becoming a very popular type of game to build.
These earlier terms would also have single player, single session (no progress saved) Flash games (that were wildly popular at the time) fit under the same umbrella as multiplayer, persistent worlds that could also be accessed on a typical locked-down library computer.