never done it before! but thinking of starting which is a good place to go to and do you have to subscribe to them all

Most online games you just connect to a server and play. The on-line game is Counter-Strike and a few scoobynet net bods hang out http://www.cshq.co.uk/bbs/.

counter strike
unreal tournament
unreal tournament: tactical ops
unreal tournament 2003
unreal tournament 2003: deathball
medal of honour allied assult
return to castle wolfenstein
quakeworld
quake2
quake3
soldier of fortune 2
jedi knight 2
nascar 2002

are some of the games

buy the game, install it, connect to the internet, start the game up, in the menu system select the Play Online (or Multiplayer) option, find a server to play on (the game's usually do this for you - i.e. display a list of servers that you can play on, the server status, how many people are playing, current scores and so on..), connect to a game server, that's it :D

Its a good idea to use something like all seeing eye or....shuders....game spy.
These will let you find games that are being hosted on the internet.
There isnt any need to sign up, well it depends on the game but if you go for Counterstrike then just use All seeing eye to fiond servers.
Conterstrike can be bought from most game shops (it isnt expencive) or you can buy HalfLife and download Counterstrike for free to upgrade Halflife.
Most games these days have some sort of on line gaming, just look on the box but in most cases you will need to download the latest patch to be able to play on a server.
What games have you got ?
To download all seeing eye goto http://www.udpsoft.com/eye/
I was once the battle group comander for one of the largest CS groups in the world (over 400 members) but that was in the good old days of CS, before all the kids killed it.

Andy

didnt know wether or not to play americas army online excellent looking game and was made by the army just got to train as recruit then get a rank and sign up for battle :D

AA is a very good game but its a bit hard to get into at first.
When you download the game you have to go through some training before you can start to play online.
Then when your online you can only join the servers that you have trained for.
It is a good game and well worth the effort and im probably making it sound worse than it is :)
Download it and see what you think, oh one tip,when you get to play online you must do the mt mcenah(sp?) map first as a continuation of your training.

Andy

Oh btw AA has got its own built in game browser as have most games, so you can find servers within the game without having to use somthing like All seeing eye, just all seeing eye or game spy can make it easier sometimes.

battlefield 1942 is good.
you get to drive tanks, planes, subs, ships, jeeps

also team fortress class for half life has 9 different types of class to play unlike counterstrike
both games are team based which are better than the death match ones

http://www.planetfortress.com/tfc/about.shtml