A five-step course for anyone opening their first online desktop game
This course is written for readers in Australia who have heard about large online games played on a desktop or laptop computer, and who want to understand what is involved before they sign up for anything. Each of the five steps takes about eight to twelve minutes to read, so the whole course is a single afternoon at most, and you can stop after any step and come back later without losing your place.
Some steps in this course mention particular games, and the link to World of Tanks is a paid affiliate link. If you follow it and later create and activate an account, the company that publishes this site is paid a commission by the affiliate network that operates the link. You pay nothing extra, and you can read all five steps and work through every checklist without following that link at all. The full explanation sits on our Affiliate Disclosure page.
The five steps, in order
- What a free-to-play online game actually is — where the money comes from when nobody asks you for any.
- Working out whether your computer can run it — how to read a requirements list and check your own machine against it.
- Reading the account terms, the privacy settings and the classification — the three documents worth five minutes each.
- Creating and activating an account you will not lose — email, password, recovery and the activation message.
- Settling in: spending, time and the people you play with — the habits that decide whether this stays fun.
A sixth page, All checklists, collects the checklist from the end of every step in one printable place. If you prefer to work with a sheet of paper beside the keyboard, start there and read the steps as you need them.
Who this course is for, and who it is not for
It is for an adult in Australia who is curious rather than committed. Perhaps a relative plays one of these games and you would like to understand the thing they talk about. Perhaps you have an older desktop computer sitting unused and you want to know whether it is still good for anything. Perhaps your household is deciding whether a teenager should be allowed to install one of these titles, and you want to read the terms before, rather than after, the argument.
It is not for a reader who already plays, and it is not a buying guide: no product is ranked, scored or compared against another, because this site has a commercial relationship with one of the games it mentions and a ranking from a publisher in that position would not be worth reading.
The one checklist to do before anything else
Before you read Step 1
- Find out whether the computer you intend to use runs Windows, macOS or Linux, and write that down. Step 2 explains how to look if you are not sure.
- Decide which email address will own the game account, and make sure you can still sign in to it today.
- Agree, with yourself or with the household, a figure in Australian dollars that may be spent on games this month. The figure can be zero.
- Check who will be playing. If that includes someone under 18, read the classification section in Step 3 before you install anything.
What you will be able to do after each step
Step 1 leaves you able to explain, in one sentence, how a game that charges no entry fee makes money, and to recognise the three common ways that money is collected. Step 2 leaves you able to open the system information screen on your own computer, read a published requirements list, and say whether the two match. Step 3 leaves you able to find the sections of a terms document that actually affect you, change the privacy settings that exist before you start playing, and look up an Australian classification rating.
What you can do for nothing at all
Most of this course costs nothing to follow. Checking your hardware is free, and so is reading a terms document. Creating an account on a free-to-play game is free by definition — that is what the phrase means, and Step 1 explains what it does not mean. The Australian government resources linked throughout are funded by taxpayers, including you.
A worked example you can follow through the course
To keep the advice concrete, each step returns to the same hypothetical household: two adults and a fifteen-year-old sharing one five-year-old Windows desktop in a regional town with a connection that slows down in the evening. This household is an illustration invented for the course. It is not a real family, nobody in it is quoted, and it reports no results from any product — it exists only so that each step has something specific to apply its advice to. Where its situation differs from yours, the step says what to change.
Where World of Tanks appears, and why
World of Tanks is described in Step 1 as an example of a large free-to-play online game, and again in Step 4 where the account flow is relevant, because the affiliate programme behind this site pays when a reader creates and activates an account. That commercial relationship is why the game appears at all, and saying so plainly is the only honest way to run a site like this one. What the publisher of the game says about it is quoted as exactly that: a vendor statement, not a finding of ours. The game runs on desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — and nothing in this course suggests otherwise.
Official Australian help
Four public bodies are worth knowing. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission administers consumer law. Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, collects reports of scams. The eSafety Commissioner handles online safety, including for young people. The Australian Classification Board publishes the classification given to games sold and distributed here. Each step links the one that is relevant to it.
How this course is written and kept current
It is written by the editorial team at Gydrotech s.r.o., the company named in the footer, and it has no individual author. Statements about a particular game come from what that game's publisher says; statements about Australian law or public services link to the body responsible. Where we do not know something, the step says so rather than guessing. The About page sets out the method in more detail, including the commercial relationship above. The review date in the footer is updated whenever the text changes, and the Contact page explains how to send a correction.
Two questions readers ask first
Do I need to create an account to read this course?
No. There is no account, no sign-up and no form anywhere on this site.
Will this course tell me which game to play?
No. It will tell you what to check. Which game suits you is a matter of taste, and a site paid by one of them is the wrong place to ask.