A five-step course on starting your first online PC game, written for readers in Australia

Each step is one page of reading, about eight to twelve minutes, and ends in a checklist you can work through at the computer. Read one step a night and you are finished in under a week; read the whole course in one sitting and it takes roughly an hour.

1. Step 1 — What signing up for an online PC game actually involves
   The four separate things hidden inside the words “sign up”, and which of them you can undo.
2. Step 2 — Working out whether your computer can run it
   How to read a system requirements table, and where to find the same numbers for your own machine.
3. Step 3 — Classification ratings and in-game spending
   What an Australian classification rating tells you, and how to see the money side before you start.
4. Step 4 — Setting up the account and checking the privacy settings
   The email address, the password, the two-factor option and the settings worth changing on day one.
5. Step 5 — Time, updates, support and leaving
   Keeping it a hobby: disk space, patch sizes, who to contact when something breaks, and how to stop.

Every checklist in the course is also gathered on one page: All checklists, laid out to print on paper.

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

This course is written for an adult in Australia who owns a desktop or laptop computer, has never installed a large online game on it, and would like to understand what they are agreeing to before anything is installed. Perhaps a family member has asked for help. Perhaps you played games years ago and the way they are distributed has changed since. Perhaps you simply dislike clicking buttons whose meaning you cannot see.

It is not for people who already run games regularly and want tactics, builds or performance tuning. It is also not a repair course: if a game you already play has stopped working, the vendor's own support channel is the right place, not a general reading course. It is also not advice about whether a particular game is worth your time; that is taste, and a course cannot settle it.

No knowledge is assumed. Terms are explained the first time they appear, and explained again in the glossary on the page where they matter most.

The one checklist to do before anything else

If you read nothing else here, do these four things first. They take about ten minutes and they prevent most of the common frustrations: write down which operating system your computer runs and which version, check how much free disk space you have, decide which email address the account will use, and read the classification rating for the game if one has been issued. Step 1 and Step 2 explain each of these at length, and the full version of the list sits at the end of Step 1.

What you will be able to do when you finish

After Step 1 you will be able to separate an account from an installed program, and say which of the two you are agreeing to at any given moment. After Step 2 you will be able to open a requirements table, find the matching figure on your own computer, and decide honestly whether it fits. After Step 3 you will be able to look up a game's Australian classification and its consumer advice, and recognise the parts of a game that involve money. After Step 4 you will have an account with a password used nowhere else, and a second factor if the vendor offers one. After Step 5 you will know what a patch costs you in disk space, who to write to when something breaks, and what closing an account does not remove.

What you can do without spending anything

Most of the work here costs nothing: checking your hardware, reading a classification entry, reading a privacy notice, setting a password, and deciding in advance what you are willing to spend. Many online PC games are offered without an upfront price and make their money from optional purchases inside the game instead; some are sold outright. Which model applies to a particular game is a fact you should read on that game's own website rather than take from here, because it changes. This course does not quote prices for anything.

A worked example, used right through the course

To keep the steps concrete, the same hypothetical household appears in each one. It is an invented example, not a real family and not a reader's account: two adults sharing one five-year-old Windows laptop, with a teenager who wants to install a large online game on it. They have a modest internet connection with a monthly data allowance and no spare disk space worth mentioning. They exist only to show the order the decisions come in.

Where World of Warships appears, and why

One product is named repeatedly in this course: World of Warships. It is named because the publisher of this site has a commercial relationship with the affiliate network that operates the link to it, and because readers deserve to be told that plainly rather than discover it. It appears in Step 1 and Step 4, where a reader who wants to follow the general advice through to an actual sign-up can see one. The affiliate network states that the program pays commission on a single opt-in, a download, and the creation and activation of an account.

Two limits on that product are worth knowing before you plan around it: the offer covers desktop computers running Windows or Mac only, and Linux is not included. Beyond those facts and the commission terms, this site does not describe the product. Anything else you want to know — what it costs, what it contains, what it requires, how it is rated — should be read on the vendor's own website, not here.

Australian organisations the steps point to

Where a step touches something an Australian body publishes guidance on, the step links to that body rather than restating it: the Australian Classification Board, which issues classification ratings and consumer advice for games sold here; the Australian Cyber Security Centre, which publishes general advice on passwords and account security; Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, which collects reports and warnings about scams; the eSafety Commissioner, which deals with online safety including gaming; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees privacy law; and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which administers the Australian Consumer Law.

How this course is written and kept current

The steps were written in order, so that a term defined in Step 2 is never used in Step 1. Each step relies on the vendor's own published material for product facts, on the Australian bodies above for anything about ratings, consumer rights, privacy or account security, and on plain general practice for everything else. Where a claim could not be sourced, it was either phrased as general guidance or cut. The whole course is reviewed on a set schedule; the date of the last review is at the foot of every page. The About page sets out the method in full, including the commercial relationship behind the one product named.

Short answers to four questions

Do I have to read the steps in order?

You do not have to, but each step assumes the words defined in the one before it. If you read only one, read Step 2, because an install that will not run on your computer wastes the most time.

Does this course work on a Linux computer?

The general advice does. The one product named in the course, World of Warships, is offered for Windows and Mac desktop computers only, so the sign-up path described in Step 4 does not apply to Linux.

Will you email me the checklists?

No. Calm Thesis has no sign-up form, no mailing list and no account. The checklists page is laid out to print on paper, and you can also save the page from your browser.

Is anything on this site sponsored?

The links to the World of Warships website are paid affiliate links. HH PROSERVIS s.r.o. is paid a commission when a reader signs up through one. Nothing else on the site is paid for, and no company has approved the wording.

When you are ready, begin with Step 1.