A five-step course for anyone in Australia who is new to online PC games
This is a short written course about getting into online games on a desktop or laptop computer: what the category actually is, whether your machine can run it, what registering for an account involves, what things cost, and what the first few sessions look like. It is written for a reader who has never done any of this before.
Each step takes about ten to fifteen minutes to read, so the whole course is roughly an hour if you read it in one sitting. Most people do not, and there is no reason to — each step ends with a checklist you can work through on your own before you come back for the next one.
Gray Tempo is funded by affiliate commission. One game, Enlisted, is linked in a few places on this site using a paid link. If you register through that link, the company that publishes this site is paid a commission by the affiliate network that operates the link. The price you pay is unaffected, and the commission does not decide what the course says or which products get a mention. The full explanation is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
The five steps
- Step 1 — What an online PC game actually is
The vocabulary, the business models, and what the word "free" does and does not cover. - Step 2 — Working out whether your computer can run it
Where your machine's specifications live on Windows, macOS and Linux, and how to compare them. - Step 3 — Registration, email confirmation and account safety
What sign-up asks for, why a confirmation email arrives, and how to keep the account yours. - Step 4 — Classification, money and randomised items
How Australian classification works, how in-game spending works, and how to set a limit first. - Step 5 — The first few sessions and the months after
Settings, connection quality, other players, updates, and stopping cleanly when you want to.
Everything in all five checklists is also gathered on the All checklists page, formatted so it prints on one sheet of white paper without the site's colours.
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LOG 00-1 // 03:10
Who this is for, and who it is not for
This course is for an adult in Australia who has decided to try an online game on a computer and has found that every explanation assumes they already know what a GPU is, what a launcher does, or why anyone would type an email address into a game. It is also for a parent or grandparent who wants to understand what a household member is about to install.
It is not for someone who already plays regularly, and it is not a technical support service: we cannot see your computer and nothing here is a diagnosis. It is also not a shop. There is no cart, no account and no sign-up. You read the pages, you work through the checklists, and that is the whole arrangement.
LOG 00-2 // 03:24
What you will be able to do at the end of each step
Step 1 leaves you able to read a game's own description and work out which business model it uses. Step 2 leaves you able to find your computer's processor, memory, graphics hardware and free storage, and compare them against a published requirements list without guessing. Step 3 leaves you able to work through a registration form knowing which fields are genuinely required and how to tell a real confirmation email from an imitation.
Step 4 leaves you able to look up a game's Australian classification and decide in advance what, if anything, you are willing to spend. Step 5 leaves you able to get through a first session without surprises: adjusting picture quality, understanding why your connection matters more than your graphics card, muting or reporting another player, and uninstalling cleanly if it turns out not to be for you.
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LOG 00-3 // 03:41
The one checklist to do before anything else
If you only do one thing from this entire site before you install anything, do this one. It takes about fifteen minutes and it prevents most of the frustration that sends new players away again.
- Write down, on paper, what operating system your computer runs and which version it is.
- Write down how much free space is on the drive where programs are installed.
- Decide which email address you will use for game accounts, and make sure you can actually open it.
- Decide, in Australian dollars, the maximum you are prepared to spend in the first three months. Writing zero is a valid answer.
- Check who else uses this computer, and whether any of them is under 18.
- Agree with yourself on a finish time for the first session before you begin it.
LOG 00-4 // 03:58
What you can do without spending anything
A surprising amount. Looking up your computer's specifications costs nothing, and so does reading a classification entry on the Australian Classification Board's register. Adjusting settings, muting other players, reporting behaviour and uninstalling are all part of the product and never cost money. If a basic function of a game is presented to you as a paid feature, that is worth noticing rather than paying for reflexively.
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LOG 00-5 // 04:12
A worked example: one hypothetical household
The example used across the course is invented to illustrate the steps, and the people in it are not real. Picture a household in a suburb of Adelaide with one desktop computer about five years old, shared between two adults and a fifteen-year-old. One of the adults has been told by a friend that online games on a computer are worth a look, and has no idea where to begin.
In Step 2 that household compares their 8 GB of memory and a graphics card from around 2018 against a published requirements list rather than hoping for the best. In Step 3 they choose a dedicated email address for game accounts. In Step 4 they look up the classification, which matters because a fifteen-year-old shares the machine, and agree out loud on a spending limit in Australian dollars. In Step 5 they find that the thing most affecting their matches is the distance to the server, not the graphics card. The household reports no opinion about any game; it is there to show the order of operations.
LOG 00-6 // 04:30
Where Enlisted appears in the course, and why
Enlisted is one specific game, described by the affiliate network that pays us as a new game set in the atmosphere of the Second World War. It appears in the course as the concrete example in Steps 1, 3 and 4, because an abstract course about "games in general" is much harder to follow than one that occasionally points at a real title. It is listed for desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — and it is not listed for phones or consoles, so it is a sensible fit for a course about desktop computers.
We are paid when someone registers and confirms their email address through our link, which is the honest reason it is the game named rather than another one. Beyond the description above, we have not been given details of its pricing, its contents or its system requirements, so we do not state any — you will find those on the vendor's own site. Every claim about what the game contains should come from the vendor, not from us.
Visit the Enlisted website Paid link. Gray Tempo is paid a commission if you register and confirm your email address after following it. What you pay, if anything, is unchanged.
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LOG 00-7 // 04:47
Official Australian sources used in the course
Where a step touches on classification, scams, online safety, privacy or consumer rights, it points at the Australian body responsible rather than inventing a rule. Those bodies are the Australian Classification Board, which classifies games sold and distributed in Australia; the Australian Cyber Security Centre, which publishes general security guidance for the public; Scamwatch, which collects and describes current scam patterns; the eSafety Commissioner, which handles online safety including gaming; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees privacy; and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which administers consumer law.
LOG 00-8 // 05:02
How this course is written and kept current
The course is written by the editorial team at DUNAS COMPANY s.r.o. There is no individual author credited, because none of it is a personal account. The sequence was chosen by working backwards from the questions a person hits in order: what is this, will it run, what does signing up involve, what will it cost, and what happens next.
General statements about Australian classification, consumer rights, privacy and online safety link to the body that publishes them. Statements about any one game come from what the vendor and the affiliate network state, and where we have not been given something, the course says so. The site is reviewed at least every six months, and the review date sits in every footer. The method is set out on the About page.
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LOG 00-9 // 05:15
Short questions
Do I have to do the steps in order?
You do not have to, but the course is built so that each step answers a question raised by the one before it. If you read only one step, read Step 2, because a game that will not run on your computer makes every other decision irrelevant.
Do I need to buy anything to finish the course?
No. Every checklist can be worked through without spending anything. The course mentions products, and one of them is linked with a paid affiliate link, but nothing here depends on you clicking it.
Is this site run by a game publisher?
No. Gray Tempo is published by DUNAS COMPANY s.r.o. It is not a game publisher, a reseller, or an authorised source for any game, and no game publisher has reviewed or approved what is written here.
Does the course work on a phone or tablet?
You can read the course on any device. The subject matter, though, is desktop computers running Windows, macOS or Linux, and the game discussed in the examples is listed as a desktop title, so the setup advice assumes a desktop or laptop computer.
If something in the course is unclear or wrong, the Contact page explains how to tell us.