Step 4 of 5

Setting up an account and checking that it works

This is the only step where anything is created. It describes the sequence in general terms that apply to any online game, because every vendor's screens differ and a walkthrough of one company's buttons would be wrong for everybody else.

Five decisions to make before you touch the keyboard

Each of these is harder to change after an account exists than before it, which is the only reason they come first.

Whose email address. The address on the account receives password resets, receipts and notices. If a child is playing, an adult's address on the account keeps those in adult hands. A shared household address works; an address nobody checks does not.

The display name. Other players see it. A name that is not the player's real name, school, suburb or year of birth is the general advice, and it is advice the eSafety Commissioner gives in more detail for younger players.

Which device. You settled this in Step 2. Confirm it, and confirm who else uses that device.

Whether a payment method goes on at all. Not adding one is a decision available to you, and it is the simplest way to hold the budget line you wrote in Step 2.

Where the password will live. A password manager, or a sheet of paper in a drawer. Both are better than memory, and both are far better than reuse.

The password, and the second factor

A password is only doing its job if it is unique to this account. The reason is not that games are especially attacked; it is that when any unrelated service is breached, the email-and-password pairs from it get tried elsewhere. A unique password contains that.

Length does more work than complexity. Four or five unrelated words is both stronger and easier to type than a short string of substituted symbols, which is the approach the Australian Cyber Security Centre recommends in its guidance on passphrases.

Multi-factor authentication adds a second check — usually a code from an app on a phone — so that the password alone is not enough to sign in. Where a game offers it, turning it on is the single most useful thing you will do in this step. Whether a particular game offers it is a question for that vendor; it is also, usefully, a question worth asking before you choose the game.

The general setup procedure

This sequence applies to online games in general. The wording on screen will differ from vendor to vendor; the order rarely does.

Checking it works, not just that it finished

An installation that completes is not the same as a setup that is sound. These six checks take a few minutes and they catch nearly everything that otherwise surfaces weeks later.

• Sign out and sign back in. This proves the password you recorded is the password that works.
• Try a password reset email. It proves the address on the account is one somebody actually reads.
• Check the game runs at a comfortable frame rate on the settings it chose for itself; if not, lower the visual settings before concluding the device cannot cope.
• Confirm the chat setting holds by looking at it again after a restart. Settings that reset are worth knowing about.
• Look at the storage figure again after the first update, so you know what the game actually occupies rather than what it claimed.
• Confirm no payment method is stored if that was the decision, by looking in the account area rather than assuming.

Privacy, chat and payment settings

Almost every online game keeps three groups of settings that matter to a household, and they are rarely in the same menu as each other.

The privacy or social group governs who can message, who can invite, who can see when the player is online, and sometimes whether a profile is public. The general advice is to start closed and open it deliberately, because opening a setting later is easy and retrieving a conversation is not.

The communication group governs chat itself: text, voice, and filtering. Where a filter exists it is usually imperfect, which is an argument for the device being in a shared room rather than for trusting the filter.

The account and payment group governs stored cards, purchase confirmation and spending limits. Device-level controls sit alongside these: both major phone platforms and both major desktop platforms can require a password or biometric check for each purchase, which is often simpler than managing it inside each game.

Where this commonly goes wrong

Three patterns account for most of the trouble people describe at this stage.

The password is reused, and gets written down nowhere. Months later, the email address on the account turns out to be one nobody checks, and recovery becomes genuinely difficult. Steps 5 and 6 of the procedure exist for this.

The client is obtained from somewhere other than the vendor or an app store, usually because a search result looked official. Reaching the site by typing the address avoids it entirely.

The settings are left at their defaults because the first session was exciting and nobody went back. Doing settings before the first session, as step 10 above does, is the fix.

If the game you chose is the one we are paid to mention

The procedure above is deliberately general and it is the part of this step that matters. If the game your household settled on happens to be Star Stable Online, the link below goes to its site, and it is a paid link — the same arrangement described in Step 2 and set out in full on our funding page.

We cannot describe its sign-up screens, its settings menus or its requirements, because the material we have does not state them; it states only that it is an online game with a programme paying commission on sign-up, on first play and on purchases. Everything else comes from the vendor.

Paid affiliate link: if you sign up after following it, the network pays us a commission, at no extra cost to you. Visit the Star Stable Online website