Step 1 — What an online war game asks of you before you play

Step 1 of 5

A large online game is not like a document you open. Before it will show you anything, it asks for six things: an account, a working email address, a slab of disk space, a quantity of downloaded data, a block of your time, and — in most cases — a decision about money that it will keep offering you later. This step takes each in turn so that none of them surprises you.

Nothing in this step requires you to install anything. You are reading the demands first and deciding whether they suit you. That is the correct order, and it is the order the rest of the course follows.

The account

An account is a record the game's publisher keeps about you: a name you are known by in the game, an email address they can reach you at, a password that proves it is you, and whatever progress you make. It exists on their computers, not yours, which is why you can sign in from a different machine and still be yourself.

Online games of this kind require one because the game is played against other people. The publisher needs a durable identity for each player so that matches can be assembled, progress can be stored and someone who behaves badly can be dealt with. A single-player game bought on a disc needed none of that. This genre does.

Registration is usually a short form: an address, a password, a display name and a tick to say you accept the terms. Two parts of it matter more than they look. The display name is visible to strangers, so it should not be your full name, your workplace or anything that identifies where you live. And the terms you tick are a contract about conduct, account closure and what happens to purchases — worth skimming once, even if nobody enjoys it.

Some publishers also require you to confirm that the address you gave is really yours, by sending a message to it with a link or a code inside. That is the double opt-in pattern, and it exists so that nobody can register an account using somebody else's address. Step 3 covers it in detail, including how to tell a genuine confirmation message from an imitation.

The email address

The address you register with becomes the key to the account. It is where password resets go, where security warnings go and where the publisher's own marketing goes. If you lose access to it, recovering the account becomes difficult and sometimes impossible.

For that reason this course suggests setting one address aside for game accounts, kept separate from the address you use for banking, government services and work. The reason is not secrecy. It is that a separate address keeps one kind of mail out of the inbox you cannot afford to miss things in, and it limits what an attacker gets if a game publisher's own records are ever exposed.

Think about who else in the household might need that address. If the account is for a teenager, an adult holding the recovery address is a reasonable arrangement, and it is easier to set up at the start than to change later.

Marketing is part of the bargain. Most publishers send news, event announcements and offers to the registered address. Australian law requires commercial electronic messages to identify the sender and to carry a working unsubscribe facility; the Australian Communications and Media Authority administers that regime. Using the unsubscribe link is the right response to mail you do not want, and it is not the same as closing the account.

The disk space

Modern online war games are big. The textures, the maps, the vehicle models and the sound files all live on your drive, and a game of this type commonly occupies somewhere between thirty and eighty gigabytes once installed. The published figure is a floor, not a ceiling: updates add to it over the months, and the installer usually needs working room on top of the final size while it unpacks.

A practical rule is to want the stated requirement plus about half again, and to keep at least 15 per cent of the drive empty afterwards. A drive that is nearly full slows the whole computer down, not just the game.

Where the game is installed matters too. If your computer has a fast solid-state drive and a larger mechanical drive, the game loads noticeably faster on the solid-state one. If it has only one drive, there is no decision to make. Step 2 shows you how to find out which you have.

The data

Everything that ends up on the drive has to come down the internet connection first, and then the game keeps using a small, steady trickle of data while you play. The initial download is the large part; a match uses relatively little by comparison, because only positions and events are being exchanged, not pictures.

Two things are worth knowing before you begin. The first is whether your plan has a monthly allowance. Many fixed home plans in Australia are now unlimited, but mobile broadband and some satellite and fixed-wireless plans are not, and a sixty-gigabyte download against a limited allowance is a bad surprise. Your provider's app or account page shows what is left.

The second is contention. Household connections are slowest in the evening, when everyone is streaming. A download started before work finishes almost always completes sooner than one started at eight at night, and it leaves the connection free for everyone else when they want it.

If other people share the connection, say what you are about to do. A quiet word beforehand prevents the conversation that otherwise happens mid-download.

The time

Three separate blocks of time are involved, and people usually budget for only the last one.

• Setup time. Registering, confirming the address, downloading and installing. Anywhere from forty minutes to most of an afternoon, depending mainly on the connection.
• Learning time. The first few hours of a game like this are spent working out the controls, the menus and what the modes mean. It is normal to feel incompetent at first, and it is not a sign that the game is badly made or that your computer is at fault.
• Session time. Online matches run to their own length and cannot be paused. A single round may take ten to twenty minutes, so the smallest sensible slot is longer than it looks.

That last point is the one worth raising in a household with children. A game that cannot be paused does not respond to "dinner is ready" the way a single-player game does, and agreeing in advance that the stopping point is the end of the current round removes most of the friction.

The money

Games in this genre are sold in several ways. Some are bought once. Some cost nothing to install and make their money afterwards from optional purchases. Some sell a subscription. You cannot tell which model applies from a trailer or a description, so the first thing to do with any specific game is to read the vendor's own page and find out what, if anything, it charges and when.

Where optional purchases exist, they typically appear as one or more of these: cosmetic items that change appearance only; a seasonal pass that opens up a set of rewards over a period; convenience purchases that shorten the time to obtain something; or an in-game currency bought with real money and then spent inside the game. That last one deserves attention because it puts a conversion step between your dollars and the thing you are buying, which makes the real cost harder to feel.

Randomised purchased items — where you pay for an unknown item rather than a chosen one — are a separate matter again, and they are the subject of continuing attention from Australian regulators. Step 5 goes into what the Australian Classification Board says about disclosure of in-game purchases and what the Australian Consumer Law covers. For now, the practical point is simply this: find out before you install whether the game has a shop, and if it does, decide in advance what you are and are not willing to spend.

If a child will play, set the payment side up deliberately rather than by default. That means no stored card on the account, or a parental control that requires approval for each purchase. Both the operating system and the game's own settings usually offer something; the household rule matters more than the mechanism.

Words you will meet

Client

The part of the game installed on your computer. The rest runs on the publisher's servers.

Server

A computer run by the publisher that holds the shared state of a match and tells every player what is happening.

Launcher

A small program that checks for updates, downloads them and then starts the game proper.

Patch

An update to the installed files. Online games patch often, and you usually cannot play until the patch is applied.

Double opt-in

Registration in two parts: you give an address, then you prove it is yours by acting on a message sent to it.

Latency

The delay between your computer and the server, measured in milliseconds. High latency makes a game feel unresponsive even when the picture is smooth.

The example used in this course

To keep the rest of the course concrete, it refers to one specific title: Enlisted. The vendor describes it as a new game set in the atmosphere of the Second World War, and states that the steps it wants from a new player are registration, confirmation of the email address, and then signing in to play. That is the whole of what the vendor states, and this course does not add to it.

So when this course mentions Enlisted, it is illustrating the pattern described above: an account, a confirmed address, and a sign-in. Matters the vendor does not state — price, download size, system requirements, what is in any shop — are not stated here either. You find those on the vendor's own site, which is what the link below is for. The game runs on desktop computers: Windows, macOS and Linux.

Visit the Enlisted website Paid affiliate link. This site is paid a commission if you register an account after following it; what you pay is unaffected, and nothing in this step depends on whether you follow it.

Before you move on

Step 1 was about demands, not decisions. You should now be able to say roughly what a game of this kind wants from you before it will run, and you should have an opinion about whether those demands fit your household's disk, connection and timetable.

Step 2 turns to the computer itself, because the next question — can this machine actually run it — is answered by four numbers you can read off your own screen in about five minutes.

Checklist: Roll call for Step 1

1. 1AI know which computer this is for, and that it is a desktop or laptop running Windows, macOS or Linux.
2. 1BI have chosen a display name that does not contain my real name, school, workplace or suburb.
3. 1CI have an email address set aside for game accounts, separate from banking and work mail.
4. 1DI know whether my internet plan has a monthly data allowance, and how much of it is left.
5. 1EI know roughly how much free space the drive has, and I accept that a large download is coming.
6. 1FI have picked a time of day for the download when the connection is not busy.
7. 1GI have read the vendor's own page to find out what, if anything, the game charges for.
8. 1HIf a child will play, I have decided how purchases are handled before the account exists.
9. 1IEveryone who shares the computer and the connection knows what is about to happen.