A five-step course for Australians who have never set up an online PC game before

The five steps below take about fifteen minutes each to read, and each one finishes with a short checklist you can work through at the keyboard. If you read one step a night, you are done in a week; if you read the lot in one sitting, allow a little over an hour.

The five steps

1. Step 1 — What a free online game account actually is
   The pieces involved: a client on your computer, an account held by the publisher, and an email address that proves the account is yours.
2. Step 2 — Working out whether your computer will run it
   How to read your own machine's specifications and compare them against a game's stated requirements without guesswork.
3. Step 3 — Reading the classification, the terms and the spending information
   Where the Australian classification sits, what to look for in an end-user agreement, and how to find out what the game sells before you install it.
4. Step 4 — Registering, confirming your email and the first launch
   A slow walk through creating an account, confirming the address, and the things worth doing in the first ten minutes.
5. Step 5 — Updates, spending limits and where to get help
   Keeping the install healthy, setting your own limits on in-game purchases, and the Australian bodies to contact when something goes wrong.

Every checklist from all five steps is also gathered on the All checklists page, formatted so it prints on paper without the navigation getting in the way.

Who this course is for, and who it is not for

This course is written for an adult in Australia who is comfortable using a computer for ordinary things — email, banking, streaming — but who has never installed a large online game and is not sure what the process involves. Perhaps a friend has mentioned a game, or a teenager in the house wants one, or you have simply decided you would like to try. You do not need to know what a GPU is, and the course explains each term the first time it is used.

It is not for people who already run several games and want a comparison of frame rates, and it is not technical support: we cannot see your computer. It is also not a buying guide — three of the five steps involve no purchase of any kind.

The course covers games that run on a desktop or laptop computer — Windows, macOS or Linux. It does not cover phones, tablets or consoles. Where a game we mention is published for desktop computers only, we say so rather than leaving you to find out after you have read three steps.

Do this one checklist before anything else

What you will be able to do when you finish

After Step 1 you will be able to explain, in your own words, the difference between the program sitting on your hard drive and the account sitting on the publisher's servers — which matters, because almost every problem beginners run into is really a problem with one or the other.

After Step 2 you will be able to write down the five numbers that describe your own computer and compare them with any game's published requirements. After Step 3 you will be able to look up a title on the Australian Classification Board's register, skim an end-user agreement for the four clauses that affect you, and find out whether a game sells randomised items.

After Step 4 you will have an account you can get back into. After Step 5 you will have a short routine for updates, a spending limit you set yourself, and a list of the Australian bodies that handle complaints about games, scams and privacy.

What you can do without spending anything

All five steps and all the checklists are readable at no cost, with no account and no email address. Many large online games are published without a purchase price, earning money instead from items sold inside the game; the course explains how to check whether that is true of a particular title rather than assuming it. Where we mention a specific game, we give only what its publisher or the promoting network actually states.

A worked example, following one household

Throughout the course, a hypothetical household in a suburb of Adelaide works through the same five steps you do. It is an invented example, not a real family and not a customer: two adults share a five-year-old laptop, a fifteen-year-old wants to try a game a schoolfriend has mentioned, and the house is on a fixed monthly data allowance. It exists to show how the checklists get used when the answers are inconvenient. It makes no claim about how any product performed, because a made-up household cannot test anything.

Where a specific game appears in this course, and why

Steps 3 and 4 refer to Enlisted, a game the network describes as set in the atmosphere of the Second World War, as a concrete illustration of the registration flow the course describes. We have a commercial relationship with the affiliate network that promotes it: if you register and confirm your email through our link, we are paid. That relationship is the reason the game is named at all. Enlisted is published for desktop computers — Mac, Windows and Linux — and the network states no mobile or console version, so this course does not imply one. Any detail we cannot source to the vendor's own description is left out rather than guessed at.

Official Australian help

Three steps point you to Australian bodies rather than to us, because they are the ones with the authority to act. The Australian Classification Board publishes the classification of games sold and distributed in Australia. Scamwatch, run by the ACCC, collects reports about scams, including fake game downloads and account-recovery cons. The eSafety Commissioner handles online safety complaints, including serious cyberbullying of a child. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes plain guidance on account security. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner deals with privacy complaints, and the ACCC administers the Australian Consumer Law.

How this course is written and kept current

The five steps were written in order, as one piece, by the KASSANDRA, spol. s r.o. editorial team. General statements are either linked to the body that publishes them or written as guidance you should check against your own situation. Where a claim about a particular product cannot be sourced to that product's vendor, it is omitted. The whole course is reviewed on a fixed schedule and the review date appears in the footer of every page. The full method, including the commercial relationship described above, is set out on the About page.

Short answers to four common questions

Do I have to finish the course in order?

No. The steps build on each other, so reading them in order is easier, but each one stands on its own and each checklist is self-contained.

Do I need an account on this site?

There is no account, no sign-up and no newsletter. There is no form anywhere on the site, and the checklists do not remember which boxes you have ticked — that is deliberate, and it is why nothing needs to be stored about you.

Will the checklists work for a game you do not mention?

They are written for the general category of online PC games rather than for one title, so the questions apply whichever game you end up trying.

Is this course official, or connected to a publisher?

Neither. Neat Motif is an independent workbook published by KASSANDRA, spol. s r.o., with no authorisation or endorsement from any game publisher.