Step 2 — Working out what your household actually needs
A better question than "is it safe?"
"Is this game safe?" has no answer, which is why asking it produces a long argument and no decision. Safety is not a property a game has or lacks. It depends on who is at the keyboard, which settings are switched on, who else is in the room, and what everybody understood the rules to be.
The question that does have an answer is: what does this household need from the arrangement in order to be comfortable with it? That turns into four small questions you can answer on half a page, plus one about money. By the end of this step you should have that half page written. It is the thing you will check settings against in Step 4, and the thing you will review in Step 5.
Write it on paper or in a note on your phone. The reason to write rather than think is that a written answer can be shown to the person who asked, and can be disagreed with specifically rather than in general.
Question one: who is playing
Note the player's age today, not their age in general. The gap between nine and twelve is large, and the gap between twelve and fifteen is larger. Note also whether anyone else in the house will end up using the same account, which happens more often than parents expect when siblings share a device.
Then note something less obvious: how this person responds to being told to stop. Not as a judgement, but because it changes which arrangements will work. A child who finishes willingly needs a clock. A child who does not needs the clock plus an agreement made in advance, in writing, before anything is installed. That is not a comment on any one game; it is a comment on how endings work.
If the player is an adult, this question is shorter but not empty. It is still worth noting whether you tend to lose track of time, because the answer informs whether you set anything up to remind you.
Question two: on which device
Where the game runs changes what you can control and how visible the playing is. Online games of this kind commonly run on a desktop or laptop computer, on a phone, and on a tablet. Each has a different character in a household.
| Device | Visibility to others | Where purchases usually run through | Typical difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared laptop or desktop in a common room | High — the screen is visible from the room | The game's own website or a games shop account | Competing for the machine with homework |
| Personal laptop in a bedroom | Low | Same as above | Nobody sees how long it has been on |
| Phone | Very low — it travels | The phone's app store account | Played in bed; hardest to time-limit |
| Tablet | Medium — often shared | The tablet's app store account | Often signed in to an adult's store account |
The column worth staring at is the third one. On a phone or tablet, a purchase usually runs through the app store account the device is signed in to, which may be an adult's, and which may already have a card attached. On a computer, a purchase usually runs through the game's own website or through a games shop account. These are different systems with different controls, and Step 4 treats them separately for that reason.
Note which device, and note who owns it. Ownership settles arguments later: a laptop belonging to a parent can have rules attached to it in a way a birthday-present laptop cannot, and it is kinder to say that at the start.
Question three: with whom
Games that run online usually put the player in the same space as strangers. The degree varies enormously: some put you in a shared world with hundreds of people and open text chat; some let you see other players but not speak to them; some are effectively solitary with a scoreboard.
Three things are worth finding out before anyone starts, and all three are answerable from the game's own website or its settings.
First, can the player send and receive messages from people they have not met in person? Second, can those messages be limited, filtered or switched off? Third, is there a way to report another player, and a way to block one?
The eSafety Commissioner is the Australian regulator for online safety and publishes free guidance for parents and carers on exactly this topic, including what to do if something goes wrong. It also operates reporting schemes for serious online harms. Reading their material on online gaming before you read any game's marketing is a good order to do things in.
The point of this question is not to find a game with no other people in it. For many players the other people are the whole appeal, and that can be perfectly healthy. The point is to know in advance which of the three answers applies, so that the conversation you have in Step 5 is not the first one.
Question four: for how long, and when
Decide the shape of playing time before it exists, because adjusting a limit downward later feels like a punishment and setting one at the start does not.
Shape matters more than total hours. "Not before homework" and "not after eight" are easier to keep than "ninety minutes", because they do not require anyone to count. Games of this kind often have activities that take an unpredictable amount of time to finish, so a rule that allows a sentence like "I just need five more minutes" to be true every single time will be tested daily.
Write down the shape, and write down who enforces it. An agreement with no named person in it is a wish.
The money question, written down in advance
This is the question households skip, and it is the one that produces the unpleasant surprise. Decide now, before an account exists, which of these your answer is:
- Nothing is bought, ever, without an adult physically present.
- A fixed amount per month or per birthday, from the player's own money, with an adult present at the moment of purchase.
- Nothing is bought until a review date that you set now.
Any of the three is defensible. What is not defensible is leaving it open, because an open question gets answered by whoever is holding the device at the time.
Some online games sell randomised items — packs whose contents are not known before purchase. Where that is so, it is a live topic for Australian regulators and classification authorities, and the current position is published by the Australian Classification Board rather than by sites like this one. If your household's answer to the money question is anything other than "nothing is bought", find out from the vendor whether randomised purchases exist in the specific game before you set an allowance.
For the product this course names as its example, the vendor's own pages are the place to check what is sold and how. The affiliate network that operates our link states that this publisher is paid when a sign-up, a first play or a sale occurs, which is the reason this disclosure sits beside every mention.
Visit the Star Stable Online website
Paid affiliate link. Quiet Stance is paid a commission if an account is created after following it. Your price is unchanged, and the four questions above work identically whichever game you are considering.Two arrangements, with their costs
Playing on a shared machine in a common room
In favour: you see roughly how much is happening without asking; ending a session is socially easier when other people are in the room; the machine is not available at two in the morning.
Against: competition with homework and other household use; the player has no privacy, which older teenagers reasonably resent; it can turn every session into a performance.
Playing on the player's own device
In favour: no competition for the machine; appropriate autonomy for an older player; settings can be configured once for one person.
Against: playing is invisible to everyone else; time limits rely entirely on the agreement; a device that travels is hard to attach a rule to.
The worked example, at this step
The example household
An invented household used to make the step concrete. No real person is described and no outcome is claimed.
Their half page reads: the player is eleven; the device is the shared lounge-room laptop, owned by an adult; the tablet is not to be used for this because it is signed in to an adult's store account; messages from strangers are to be off if the game allows it, and if it does not, that is a reason to reconsider; playing happens after homework and not after 8 pm on school nights; and nothing is bought at all until a review in three months. Both adults have read the half page. The eleven-year-old has read it too and has argued about the 8 pm line, which is a better outcome than finding out about it on the first night.
Before you move on
What Step 2 established
- "Is it safe" has no answer; "what do we need" does.
- You have four written answers: who, which device, with whom, and when.
- You have a money answer chosen in advance from three options.
- The device choice decides which purchase system you will be configuring in Step 4.
- Nothing has been installed yet, and the half page can still change.
Checklist for Step 2
Work through these before Step 3
- Write the player's name and current age at the top of a page.
- Add whether anyone else will use the same account.
- Name the device, and name who owns it.
- Check whether that device is signed in to a store account belonging to an adult.
- Check whether a payment card is saved in that store account.
- Find out from the game's own site whether players can message each other.
- Find out whether messages can be limited or switched off.
- Find out how to report and block another player.
- Read one page of parent guidance on esafety.gov.au.
- Write the shape of playing time, not a number of hours.
- Write the name of the person who enforces it.
- Choose one of the three money answers and write it down.
- Set a review date, three months from now, and put it in a calendar.
- Read the half page aloud to everyone it applies to, including the player.