A five-step course on online games, written for people starting from zero

Each step takes about eight to twelve minutes to read, so the whole course is roughly an hour if you read it in one sitting. Most readers do a step a day and work through its checklist before moving on.

The five steps

1. Step 1 — How an online game account actually works: the parts you are agreeing to when you sign up.
2. Step 2 — Working out what you actually need: device, connection, players, time and budget, written down.
3. Step 3 — Reading classifications, terms and the real cost: where the money and the rules are hidden.
4. Step 4 — Setting up an account and checking it works: a general procedure that applies to almost any title.
5. Step 5 — Living with it: spending, updates, arguments about screen time, and leaving cleanly.

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

This course is for an adult in Australia who is about to sign up to an online game for the first time, or who is about to let someone in their household do it. That includes a parent whose child has asked for a particular game, a grandparent who has been handed a tablet and a request, and an adult who simply has not played anything online since games came on discs.

An online game is one that needs a live connection to a company’s servers to work, and usually an account in your name. That single fact makes it different from a game you buy once and keep, and it is why the rest of this course exists.

It is not for experienced players after tactics or performance tuning. It does not rank games, name a best choice, or offer training you can pass. There is nothing to sign up to and no progress to save — the checklists are printed lists you tick on paper.

What you will be able to do after each step

After Step 1 you will be able to explain the difference between the game client on your device, the account held by the publisher, and the servers that run the world everyone shares. That distinction decides what happens to your money, your data and your progress.

After Step 2 you will have a single page of notes describing your own situation: who is playing, on what hardware, over what connection, for how long each week, and what you are willing to spend in a month. Almost every later decision reads off that page.

After Step 3 you will be able to open a game's own pages and find four things quickly: its classification, its terms of service, how it charges, and whether it sells randomised items. You will also know where to check those claims independently.

After Step 4 you will have an account set up the careful way: a passphrase you have not used elsewhere, multi-factor authentication on, a recovery address that works, the chat and contact settings set deliberately rather than left at whatever they came as.

After Step 5 you will have a short routine for the months afterwards — what to review, what to turn off, what to do if something goes wrong, and how to close the account and stop the payments if the household loses interest.

The one checklist to do before anything else

A worked example: one hypothetical household

What you can do without spending anything

Most of this course costs nothing to do. Reading a game's terms, looking up its classification, setting up a separate email address for game accounts and turning on multi-factor authentication are all free. So is checking whether your connection is good enough, because publishers describe their requirements on their own support pages. Where a game can be tried without payment, Step 3 shows you how to check the current arrangement at the source rather than trusting a claim that may already be stale.

Where a specific title appears in this course, and why

Steps 2 and 3 use one named title as a concrete example, because a course made entirely of abstractions is hard to apply. That title is Star Stable Online, and the links to it are paid affiliate links.

Here is the honest position. INAKA s.r.o. has a commercial relationship with the affiliate network that operates that link: commission is payable when a reader signs up, plays for the first time, or makes a purchase. That relationship is why this particular title is the one used as the example rather than another. It is not why the course says what it says. The checklists were written before any link was placed, they are deliberately title-neutral, and every one of them works just as well if you are considering something else entirely. If a step tells you to look for something, it tells you to look for it in whatever game you are actually considering.

Beyond the fact that it runs an affiliate programme paying on sign-up, first play and purchases, this site makes no claims about that game. It does not describe how it plays, what it costs, who it suits or how good it is, because the publisher has not stated those things to us and inventing them would be worse than saying nothing. Visit the Star Stable Online website if you want the publisher's own account of it.

The link above is a paid affiliate link: INAKA s.r.o. earns a commission if you sign up after following it, at no extra cost to you.

Official Australian help, and what each body actually does

Five Australian organisations are referred to throughout the steps, and it helps to know in advance what each one is.

• The Australian Classification Board classifies films, computer games and some publications for Australia, and publishes a searchable database of what has been classified and why.
• The eSafety Commissioner is Australia's independent regulator for online safety, and runs complaint schemes covering cyberbullying of children, adult cyber abuse and image-based abuse.
• The ACCC administers the Australian Consumer Law, which covers consumer guarantees on goods and services bought in Australia, including digital ones.
• Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, collects scam reports and publishes descriptions of current scam types.
• The OAIC is the national privacy regulator and oversees the Australian Privacy Principles.
• The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes the government's plain-language guidance on passphrases, multi-factor authentication and software updates.

How this course is written and kept current

Every step is written by the INAKA s.r.o. editorial team, and the page you are reading is the same page every visitor gets, regardless of where they arrived from, what device they use or which country they are in.

General statements about Australian law and regulators link to the relevant body's own site rather than to a summary of it. Where we cannot source something, the step says so instead of guessing. The review date in the footer is the last time the whole course was checked against its sources, and the About page describes the method in more detail.

When you are ready, begin with Step 1. Or go straight to the printable checklists if you prefer to work backwards from the actions.