Step 5 of 5
Your first fortnight, and how to leave well
The first two weeks decide whether a game becomes a pastime you enjoy or a habit you resent. This step covers the settings worth changing immediately, the questions worth asking at the end, and how to stop cleanly.
Settings worth changing on day one
Every game in this category puts its settings in roughly the same places, and the defaults are chosen to suit the publisher rather than you. Five are worth attention before your second session.
Visual quality. If Step 2 told you the machine sits near the minimum, turn the quality down at the start rather than after a frustrating evening. A game that looks plain and runs smoothly is more enjoyable than one that looks rich and stutters.
Audio and voice chat. Decide whether voice chat with strangers is on or off. In a shared household, with a younger player, or simply if you prefer quiet, off is a reasonable default and can be changed later.
Who may contact you. Most online games let you restrict messages and invitations to people you have added as friends. This is usually found under social or privacy settings, and tightening it removes a category of nuisance entirely.
Notifications. Games increasingly send reminders by email or to the desktop. If you would rather decide when you play, turn them off on the first day, while you still remember where the control is.
Anything described as a limited-time offer in the shop. Not a setting, but worth a rule: during the first fortnight, buy nothing. You cannot judge value in a game you do not yet understand, and the ceiling you wrote at Step 4 is easier to hold if the first answer is always no.
A fortnight, laid out
Timeline
- Day 1 — Install, log in, change the five settings above, play one short session and stop.
- Days 2 to 4 — Learn the basic controls. Expect to be poor at it; everyone is. Note how long the sessions actually run compared with how long you intended.
- Day 5 to the first weekend — Try the parts of the game you came for. For a vehicle-building game, that means building something rather than only playing what you were given.
- Week 2 — Notice the pattern: when you play, for how long, and whether you look forward to it or feel obliged.
- End of week 2 — Sit down with the three questions below and answer them in writing.
The point of writing a fortnight down in advance is that it gives you a natural review date. Without one, the decision to keep playing is never actually made; it just happens.
Playing alongside other people
An online multiplayer game puts you in matches with strangers, and most of them are unremarkable. A minority are not, and every game of this kind provides tools for that: muting an individual, blocking them, and reporting behaviour to the publisher.
Find those three controls early, while nothing is wrong. Looking for a report button in the moment you need it is how people end up doing nothing instead.
If online interaction becomes seriously abusive, the eSafety Commissioner is the Australian regulator for online safety and sets out what can be reported and how at esafety.gov.au. It is the right reference for a household dealing with something beyond ordinary rudeness.
One more point about other players: in a game built on player-made vehicles, strangers will offer advice, trades and shortcuts. Advice is usually generous and often good. Anything involving an account login, an outside website or a payment is not, and the rule from Step 3 still holds — nobody legitimate needs your password.
Keeping it in proportion
Games of this kind are designed to reward regular attendance. Daily tasks, streaks and seasonal passes all work by making a short absence feel costly, and that is a deliberate design choice rather than an accident.
Knowing that is most of the defence. Two practical habits do the rest. Decide the length of a session before it starts, and set a timer on your phone in the next room so that stopping is a decision you already made. And keep at least one or two evenings a week with no play in them at all, so that the pattern is yours rather than the game's.
If play is displacing sleep, work, study or meals, treat that as the signal it is. We are a course about choosing and setting up a game, not a health service, and the right people to talk to about anything serious are your own general practitioner or a support service, not a website.
Updates, storage and maintenance
An online game is a moving object. Updates arrive regularly, they are usually mandatory, and they take space and bandwidth. Three consequences follow for a household on an ordinary connection.
Keep more free drive space than the current install needs — a game that fits exactly today will not fit after a year of updates. Expect occasional days when a download must finish before you can play, which is a poor evening to have planned around. And if your plan has a data allowance, large updates count against it just as the first download did.
Servers also go down for maintenance, usually on a schedule the publisher announces. This is normal and is not a sign that anything is wrong with your computer.
Three questions at the end of the fortnight
Answer these in writing, because written answers are harder to argue with later.
Did I enjoy the hours I spent, or only the idea of them? Both answers are respectable. Only one of them is a reason to continue.
Did I stay inside the ceiling I set at Step 4? If not, the interesting question is not the amount but the moment — what was happening when the limit stopped applying.
Is the time coming from somewhere I can afford? Evenings are finite, and the game is not the only thing competing for them.
If you want to compare your own experience against what the vendor says the game offers, its pages are the place to do it.
Paid affiliate link. A completed sign-up through it pays Subtle Plane a commission; it costs you nothing and changes nothing in this step, which is written to be useful whether you follow it or not.
Leaving well
Deciding a game is not for you is an ordinary outcome, and it deserves the same care as starting. Four things make it clean.
Numbered procedure — stopping properly
- Cancel anything that renews — a pass, a subscription, a recurring bundle — using the control you located at Step 4.
- Remove any stored payment method from the account, so that nothing can be charged by anyone who later gets access.
- Uninstall the client from your computer through the operating system's normal add-or-remove-programs control, not by deleting the folder.
- Decide what to do with the account itself: leave it dormant, or ask the publisher to close and delete it. If you want it deleted, their privacy or support pages will say how, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner explains individuals' general rights over personal information.
Keep the email address alive for a while even if you stop playing, since it is the only way to recover the account if you change your mind.
The household, at Step 5
Worked example — a hypothetical household
On day one they turn the visual settings down, switch voice chat off, restrict invitations to friends, and silence the email reminders. Sessions are set at an hour, with a timer in the kitchen.
At the end of the fortnight they answer the three questions on the same fridge list they started at Step 1. Whatever they decide, the account has no card attached and the adults know where the cancellation and deletion controls are. This household is invented to illustrate the steps and reports no results from any product.
Finishing the course
Before you move on
That is the whole course. You have a description of your own computer, a working account held securely, a classification you looked up yourself, a ceiling in dollars, and a review date. Nothing here expires, and nothing needs to be renewed. Print the checklists and keep them; the next game you consider will go much faster.
Checklist for Step 5
Work through this away from the screen
- Turn visual quality down to match what Step 2 told you about your machine.
- Decide whether voice chat is on or off, and set it.
- Restrict messages and invitations to friends only.
- Turn off email and desktop notifications from the game.
- Find the mute, block and report controls and note where they are.
- Set a session length and a way of being reminded when it ends.
- Keep two evenings a week clear of play.
- Buy nothing in the first fortnight.
- Check your free drive space again after the first few updates.
- At the end of two weeks, answer the three questions in writing.
- If you are stopping: cancel renewals, remove stored payment details, uninstall properly, and decide whether to ask for the account to be deleted.
Print all six checklists at once from the All checklists page.