All checklists from the course, in one place
Every checklist from the five steps is reproduced below in the order you meet it. The page is designed to print cleanly on paper, so you can work through the boxes away from the screen.
How to use these
The boxes are printed, not interactive. Nothing on this site remembers what you have ticked, because nothing is stored: no cookies, no browser storage, no account. That is a deliberate choice rather than a limitation, and it means the only reliable copy of your progress is the one you make yourself, on paper or in a note of your own.
Use them in order. The sequence is the useful part. Each checklist assumes you have done the one before it, so working through Step 4's boxes without having done Step 2's will leave you ticking things you cannot actually verify. If you have come to this page first, the course itself is at the course home page, and Step 1 begins here.
Do not treat an unticked box as a failure. Several of them are decisions rather than tasks — what you are willing to spend, who in the household may spend it, whether a payment card goes on the account at all. A decision of “not yet” is a complete answer, and writing it down is the whole point. The checklists exist to make those choices explicit before a game makes them for you by default.
Three of the lists benefit from being kept rather than thrown away. The Step 2 inventory of your computer is reusable for every game you ever consider, so it is worth copying somewhere permanent. The Step 3 account decisions matter again the next time anyone in the house signs up for anything. The Step 5 household position is the one to pin somewhere visible and revisit when circumstances change.
If you are doing this with someone else in the household, work through Step 3 and Step 5 together rather than reporting back afterwards. Those two lists contain the items where two people's assumptions quietly differ, and finding that out at the checklist stage is much cheaper than finding it out at the statement stage.
Nothing here has a deadline. The course does not expire, there is no sequence you are behind in, and a checklist half done this month and finished next month works exactly as well.
Before you read Step 1
- Decide which computer this is about, and make sure it runs Windows or macOS. Linux machines are outside the scope of this course and of the links on it.
- Find out whether you have an administrator account on that computer, or whether someone else does.
- Check whether your internet connection has a monthly data allowance, and roughly how much of it is spare.
- Agree with anyone else who uses the computer that you are going to install something on it.
- Put aside about an hour in total, split however you like across five sittings.
Checklist for Step 1 — what “free to play” means
- Write down, in your own words, what “free to play” means. One sentence is enough.
- Find the game's own front page and read how it describes its own pricing.
- Identify which of the four purchase groups that game appears to sell from.
- Check whether the game has a shop you can look at before installing anything.
- Decide now, in advance, what you are willing to spend in the first month. Writing “nothing” is a complete answer.
- Note down any term you met that you still cannot define, and look it up before Step 2.
- Confirm the computer you have in mind runs Windows or macOS, since Linux is outside this course.
Checklist for Step 2 — what your computer needs
- Write down your operating system name and version.
- Write down your processor line in full, model number included.
- Write down your installed memory in gigabytes.
- Write down your graphics part, model number included.
- Check free space on the drive you would install to, and leave headroom for updates.
- Confirm your account on that computer can install software.
- Open the publisher's requirements list and compare it line by line with your inventory.
- Note the date the requirements list was published, if it is shown.
- Check your internet plan's monthly data allowance and how much is spare.
- Tell anyone else who shares the connection before you start a large download.
- Decide in advance which settings you will lower if the picture stutters.
Checklist for Step 3 — accounts and terms
- Choose an email address you expect to keep for years, and not a work address.
- Create a long, unique passphrase and store it somewhere you can retrieve it.
- Pick a display name that reveals nothing about your identity or location.
- Answer country and date of birth honestly.
- Search the terms for: licence, terminate, modify, refund, virtual currency.
- Note what the terms say happens to purchases if an account is closed.
- Read the publisher's privacy notice and find where personal information is stored.
- Decide who in the household holds the password and the recovery email.
- Decide whether any payment method will be attached to the account at all.
- Confirm the activation email arrived promptly and came in response to something you did.
- Bookmark the ACCC, OAIC and eSafety pages so you can find them again without searching.
Checklist for Step 4 — installing and the first session
- Confirm free disk space with headroom beyond the published installed size.
- Schedule the download for a time that suits everyone sharing the connection.
- Download the installer from the publisher's own site, reached deliberately.
- Read every installer screen and untick any bundled extra.
- Note the install location before you click finish.
- Let the launcher complete its first download without interrupting it.
- Set a download speed limit in the launcher if one is available.
- Turn off the launcher starting automatically with your computer.
- Lower the resolution before the first session if Step 2 put you near minimum.
- Turn the master volume down before the first launch.
- Set who can message or invite you, and check where reporting and blocking live.
- Decline desktop and email notifications for now.
- Do not save a payment method.
- Write down anything that confused you in the first session.
Checklist for Step 5 — spending and staying in control
- Work out what one unit of the game's premium currency costs in AUD.
- Check whether bundle sizes divide evenly into item prices, and note the remainder.
- Find out whether the game discloses the odds on any randomised purchase.
- Look the game up in the Australian Classification Board's database and read the consumer advice.
- Write your monthly ceiling in AUD on paper.
- Write down who may spend, and whether they must ask first.
- Remove any saved payment method from the account.
- Write your rule for randomised items, including no card access for anyone under 18.
- Put a monthly statement check in a shared calendar.
- Decide your position on daily tasks and streaks before they start.
- Find the publisher's support contact and save it somewhere you can find again.
- Read how to request account deletion in the publisher's privacy notice.
Some links in this course go to the World of Warships website and are paid links; Mimo-mind s.r.o. is paid a commission if you follow one and create and activate an account there. None of the checklists above requires you to do so. Our funding page explains the arrangement.