A five-step course for people in Australia who are new to online multiplayer PC games

The whole course is about 55 minutes of reading straight through, and each step stands on its own if you would rather do one a week. Nothing here needs an account, a download or a payment.

The five steps, in order

Step 1 — What free-to-play means, and what it does not
Where the money in a no-upfront-cost game actually comes from, and the vocabulary you will meet.
Step 2 — Working out whether your computer can run it
Finding your own specifications and comparing them to a published requirements list without guessing.
Step 3 — Classification, terms and the privacy notice
The three documents worth reading before you sign up, and the handful of clauses that matter.
Step 4 — Making an account and checking the first session
Email, passwords, two-factor, activation, and what a healthy first hour looks like.
Step 5 — Living with it: spending, randomised items and time
Setting a budget before you need one, randomised rewards, refunds and where to complain.

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

This course is written for an adult in Australia with a desktop or laptop computer who has heard that large online games often cost nothing to install, and has no idea where to start or what the catch is. You do not need to know what a graphics card is or what "free-to-play" means; each term is explained the first time it appears.

It is also useful if you are the person in a household who gets asked to make these decisions for someone else. Step 3 and Step 5 matter most in that situation.

It is not for you if you already play online games regularly and want tuning advice, benchmarks or tactics. Nothing here goes beyond a beginner's first few weeks, and it is not a guide to any one product: where a specific product appears, it appears as an example of a general point.

This is a workbook and not a class. There is no enrolment, no login, no record of what you have read and no certificate at the end.

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What you will be able to do after each step

A course is easier to commit to when you know what it hands you. Below is the manifest: what each step is for, and how long it takes to read unhurried.

Course manifest — five parts, one outcome each
Part	What you will be able to do	Min
01	Explain in your own words how a game with no purchase price makes money, and name the four ways it usually does.	11
02	Read your own computer's specifications off the screen and compare them, line by line, to a published requirements list.	12
03	Find a game's Australian classification, locate the clauses in the terms that affect you, and tell whether a privacy notice answers the basic questions.	12
04	Set up an account safely, turn on two-factor authentication, and tell the difference between a bad connection and a slow computer.	10
05	Set a spending limit before you are tempted, recognise randomised purchases, and know which Australian body to contact when something goes wrong.	11

Each step ends with a checklist of the same material. All six are gathered on the All checklists page, which prints onto plain paper.

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The one checklist to do before anything else

If you do one thing from this site, do this one. Ten minutes, no software, and it removes most of the ways a first attempt goes badly.

Before you look at any game

Write down, on paper, the maximum amount in AUD you are willing to spend on this hobby in the next three months. The number can be zero. Zero is a normal answer.
Check that the computer you plan to use is a desktop or laptop running Windows, macOS or Linux, and note which one and which version.
Create or identify an email address you are happy to use for game accounts, and make sure you know its password.
Check that your email account itself has two-factor authentication turned on. Everything else rests on this one.
Decide who else uses this computer, and whether any of them is under 18.
Note roughly how much free storage space the computer has, in gigabytes.

Everything after this compares what you wrote down against what a product asks for.

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A worked example: one hypothetical household

This household is invented to make the steps concrete. It is not a real family, nobody in it is named, and it reports no results from any product.

Picture a share house in a regional Australian town: one five-year-old desktop in the living room, three adults, no budget for new hardware. One of them wants to try a large online game that costs nothing to install.

Step 1 tells them the money comes from in-game purchases rather than a purchase price, which reframes the question from "can we afford it" to "what will we be asked to buy later". Step 2 puts their machine between a published minimum and a published recommended specification, so they expect modest settings. Step 3 turns up the Australian classification and a clause about account sharing that matters in a house where one computer has three users. Step 4 puts the account on the one email address that already has two-factor authentication. Step 5 produces a quarterly figure, agreed out loud and written on the fridge.

None of that required buying anything. The course is a sequence of findings, not a sequence of purchases.

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What you can do without spending anything

A fair amount of this subject costs nothing. Reading a publisher's own system requirements page costs nothing, and so does reading your own computer's specifications, which uses a tool already installed on every operating system. So does checking a title's Australian classification on the Australian Classification Board database, the Board being the statutory body that assigns those ratings.

Turning on two-factor authentication costs nothing, setting a budget costs nothing, and reading the terms costs nothing except patience. Most online games in this category can be installed and played without a payment, although what that includes varies by product and only the vendor can tell you.

This course never says you must buy something to be safe, to be competitive or to finish. If you read all five steps, do the checklists and then decide the hobby is not for you, it has done its job.

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Where World of Tanks appears in this course, and why

World of Tanks is named as one product in the online multiplayer category, and the links to it are paid affiliate links. We have a commercial relationship with the network that operates them, and we say so wherever a link appears, not only here.

What we will not do is describe the product beyond what its own vendor states. We do not reproduce its system requirements, contents, prices or interface, because those change and the vendor's own site is the only source worth trusting for them. The course therefore teaches you to read a requirements list rather than reprinting one, and describes setting things up in terms that apply to the whole category.

One fact we can state: the programme pays a commission when a reader creates and activates an account, and the product is offered for desktop computers running Mac, Windows or Linux. If your only device is a phone or a tablet, this example will not apply to you, though the rest of the course still will.

Visit the World of Tanks website

Paid link. If you create and activate an account after following it, we are paid a commission. Your costs are unchanged.

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Official Australian help

Several Australian government bodies publish free material more authoritative than anything this site could write. Each is described only by what it is.

Australian Classification Board — the statutory body that classifies films, computer games and certain publications for sale and distribution in Australia, with a searchable database of decisions.
eSafety Commissioner — the national independent regulator for online safety, which publishes guidance for adults, parents and young people and handles certain complaints.
Scamwatch — the ACCC-run service that collects scam reports and publishes descriptions of current scam types.
ACCC — the national competition and consumer regulator, which publishes guidance on consumer rights, including rights that apply to digital products.
Australian Cyber Security Centre — part of the Australian Signals Directorate, publishing plain-language security guidance for individuals and small organisations.
OAIC — the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the regulator for privacy under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

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How this course is written and kept current

The five steps were written as a single sequence rather than assembled from separate articles, which is why vocabulary introduced in Step 1 is used without re-explanation later. Each step relies on three kinds of source: Australian government publications for rights, classification and safety; operating-system documentation for reading your own hardware; and the vendor's own pages for anything about a specific product. Where none of those covers a question, the step says it is general guidance rather than a statement of fact.

The course is reviewed in full twice a year, and sooner if an Australian regulator changes guidance a step depends on; the review date sits in the footer of every page. It is written and maintained by the indefinido trade s.r.o. editorial team, with no guest authors and no named instructors. The About page sets out the method in more detail, including the commercial relationships behind it.

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Short FAQ

Do I have to do the steps in order?

No, but Step 1 defines the words the other four use. If you skip it, start with it when a term stops making sense.

Does the site remember which boxes I have ticked?

No. There is no login, no cookie and no browser storage, so the boxes are printed rather than interactive. Print the All checklists page and use a pen.

Will you email me the course?

No. There is no mailing list and no sign-up form here, only a plain contact address for questions and corrections.

Is this site connected to any game publisher?

No. It is published by indefinido trade s.r.o. and funded by affiliate commission, which is explained on the Affiliate Disclosure page.