Step 5 — Time, money, other players and leaving

Step 5 of 5 · about ten minutes to read

Time is the real currency

Games in this category are built so that playing produces progress, and progress produces a reason to play again. That is not a trick; it is the shape of the genre, and it is why people enjoy it. It does mean the thing you spend most of is time, and time is the thing people are least likely to have budgeted.

The sheet you wrote in Step 1 contains a sentence about how long a weeknight session would be. Now is the moment to turn that sentence into something with a shape — a time of evening it starts, a time it ends, and days it does not happen at all. A limit with a clock attached is one you can notice yourself breaking.

Daily and weekly tasks are the specific mechanic to watch. Many games offer rewards for logging in and completing a short list each day. They are a legitimate design, and they are also a quiet obligation. If a day comes when you are playing only to avoid losing a streak, that is worth noticing. The streak is not a debt.

One practical device: decide in advance what a session ends on. "Two more matches after this one" is a decision; "when I feel like stopping" is not, because the design is in the business of making that feeling arrive late.

A spending rule you can keep

Step 4 suggested spending nothing for the first month. This step is about what happens after that month, if you have decided you like the game.

The rule that holds up best is an annual figure, in AUD, written down before the first purchase, and reviewed once rather than continuously. An annual figure resists the main problem with per-purchase thinking: each individual amount looks small, and twelve small amounts do not feel like one large one until the statement arrives.

Three supports make an annual figure easier to keep. Do not store a payment method in the account, so every purchase takes a deliberate minute. Keep a note of each amount with its date, in the same file as your sheet. And set the review date — a specific date in your calendar — rather than reviewing when you happen to think of it.

If the figure you wrote is zero, that is a complete and common answer, and nothing in this course treats it as a lesser way to play.

Converting in-game prices back into AUD

In-game prices are usually shown in a currency the publisher invented, bought in bundles with awkward numbers so that the bundle never quite matches the price. This is worth a minute of arithmetic the first time.

Work out what one unit of the in-game currency costs in AUD from the bundle you would actually buy, including any bundle that leaves a remainder you cannot spend. Then, whenever you see an item priced in that currency, multiply. Write the two or three numbers that matter — the per-unit cost, the cost of the item you want — on your sheet, and you will never have to do it again.

Do the same for anything recurring. A monthly premium status is a subscription; multiply by twelve and compare that figure against the annual limit you set, not against the monthly price.

If a game sells randomised containers, the arithmetic does not work, because what you receive is not fixed. The only number you can control there is the amount you put in. Treat each container purchase as money spent and gone at the moment of payment, and decide whether you are content with that outcome before paying.

A sensible first year, laid out

This is one workable pattern, not a requirement. The useful part is that the review dates are fixed in advance, which means they happen when nothing in particular has gone wrong.

Other players, over the long run

Most people you meet in these games are unremarkable, a few are helpful, and a small number are not worth a second of your attention. Over months, three situations come up often enough to plan for.

Abuse in chat. Mute, then report through the in-game system, then stop thinking about it. Arguing has never improved an outcome in a match that lasts ten minutes. If it becomes serious, targeted or persistent, the eSafety Commissioner is Australia's online safety regulator and has a complaints process.

Offers from strangers. Account trading, item trading, "boosting" services and anyone offering currency below the publisher's price are, between them, the source of most of the trouble in this area. They usually breach the terms you read in Step 3, and the realistic outcomes are a lost account, a lost payment, or both. If something arrives by message, email or a link in chat claiming to be from the publisher, do not follow it; go to the publisher's site yourself. Scamwatch publishes current examples and takes reports.

Group play. Playing with people you actually know is usually the thing that makes these games last, and it is also the thing most likely to pull your session past the time you set. Worth enjoying, worth watching.

Quarterly account maintenance

Four small jobs, every three months, taking about ten minutes in total.

• Check that two-factor authentication is still enabled and that you still have the recovery codes on paper.
• Check whether a payment method has quietly been saved during a purchase, and remove it if so.
• Look at the account's login history or active sessions page, if the publisher provides one, and end sessions you do not recognise.
• Read any notification about changed terms rather than dismissing it, and re-check the clauses from Step 3 that it touches.

If you ever believe someone else has been in the account, change the password from a device you trust, end other sessions, and contact the publisher's support through its own site. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance on what to do after an account compromise.

Leaving, properly

People drift away from these games rather than leaving them, which usually means an abandoned account with an email address and possibly a card attached to it, sitting there indefinitely. Leaving deliberately takes about fifteen minutes and is better in every way.

Remove any stored payment method first. Cancel anything recurring, through whichever service actually charges you — the publisher, a platform, or an app store — because cancelling in one place does not always cancel in another. Then use the account closure process you located in Step 3.

Expect the publisher to keep some records after closure; most do, for a stated period, and the privacy policy says which. If you want to know what is held about you, the publisher's privacy policy sets out how to ask. The OAIC publishes general guidance on privacy rights in Australia and handles privacy complaints.

Finally, uninstall the client and reclaim the disk space. It is the easiest part and the one most often left undone.

The worked example: six months on

The hypothetical household from Step 1 reaches its six-month review. One of them is still playing two or three evenings a week; the other stopped in the second month and has not missed it.

Their notes show an annual figure of $60 set at week four, with $35 of it spent, all of it on a premium status rather than on randomised containers. The sessions have run longer than the half-hour they planned, closer to fifty minutes, which they decide is acceptable and write down as the new plan rather than pretending it is not happening.

The one who stopped goes through the leaving list: no saved card, nothing recurring, closure request submitted, client uninstalled, 35 GB back. Ten minutes.

What makes that review possible is not discipline. It is that there were numbers on a sheet to compare against. The household is hypothetical, but the sheet is the whole point of this course.

Finishing the course

Checklist 5 — living with it