A five-step course on starting a free-to-play PC game, written for readers in Australia who have never installed one
The five steps below take about ninety minutes to read end to end, or fifteen to twenty minutes each if you prefer one sitting at a time. Nothing here needs to be done at a computer; you can read the whole course on a phone and act on it later.
How this site is paid for
Blank Index is published by I&M ALEX s.r.o. Some links on this site go to Crossout, and those links are paid affiliate links: if you create an account through one of them, the publisher is paid a commission by the affiliate network that operates the link. You pay nothing extra, and the game remains free to play. The commission plays no part in what the five steps say, and you can finish the entire course without clicking any of those links. The full explanation is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
- Step 1 — What “free to play” actually asks of you. The trade behind a game with no purchase price, and the four things such a game normally wants in return.
- Step 2 — Working out whether your computer is the right kind. How to read a requirements list, where to find your own specifications, and why some games are Windows and Linux only.
- Step 3 — Reading the account, email and privacy terms before you agree. What a sign-up form is really asking for, and which paragraphs of a privacy notice repay a slow read.
- Step 4 — Installing, signing in, and the first hour. A general order of operations that applies to any PC game, and the checks that tell you it is working properly.
- Step 5 — Spending, randomised items and classification. How in-game money works, what the Australian Classification Board publishes, and how to set a limit you will keep.
Who this course is for, and who it is not for
This course is written for an adult in Australia who has heard that a lot of large PC games now cost nothing to install and has no idea where the catch is. You might have a laptop bought for work, or a machine the household uses for everything, and you have probably never checked what graphics hardware is inside it.
It is also written for the person in a household who ends up answering everybody else's computer questions. If a teenager or a flatmate is asking to install something, Steps 2, 3 and 5 give you the specific things to look at rather than a general feeling of unease.
It is not written for someone who already builds computers or wants help playing a particular game well; there is no strategy advice here. It is also not written for children, because it assumes an adult making decisions about a household's equipment and money.
What you will be able to do after each step
Each step ends with a checklist, and each checklist is a set of things you can actually do rather than things to remember. After Step 1 you will be able to say in your own words what a studio gets from a player who never spends anything. After Step 2 you will be able to open your computer's own system information and compare four numbers against a published requirements list. After Step 3 you will be able to read a sign-up form and a privacy notice and say which pieces of information are compulsory and which are not.
After Step 4 you will be able to install a large program and recognise the handful of symptoms that mean a machine is being asked for more than it can give. After Step 5 you will be able to find a game's Australian classification and work out what its in-game currency costs in Australian dollars.
The one checklist to do before anything else
Checklist 0 — before you read any further
- Find out whether the computer you intend to use runs Windows, Linux or macOS. The answer decides whether most of this course applies to you at all.
- Find out roughly how much free space is on the drive the computer starts from. Large games are measured in tens of gigabytes.
- Check whether your internet plan has a data allowance, and how much of it is left this month.
- Decide, before you are interested in anything in particular, the largest amount in Australian dollars you would be willing to spend on a game in a year. Write it down somewhere you will see it again.
- Agree with anyone else who uses the computer that you will be installing something on it.
A worked example followed through the course
Hypothetical example
To keep the steps concrete, the course follows one invented household. It is a hypothetical, not a real person and not a customer: a two-adult household in a rented unit, one four-year-old Windows laptop used mostly for study, a fixed wireless internet connection with a monthly data allowance, and a general feeling that games are an expensive hobby. Nothing this household does in the example is a claim about what any product will do for you; it exists only to show the order in which the decisions arrive.
The household appears in each step as a short box: in Step 2 it finds the laptop has integrated graphics rather than a separate card, and in Step 5 it sets a forty-dollar yearly limit. Following one household keeps the steps a sequence of ordinary decisions rather than a list of abstractions.
What you can do without spending anything
Everything in this course can be done for nothing. The checks in Step 2 use tools already built into Windows and most Linux distributions, and Step 5 is specifically about not spending until you have decided to.
A free-to-play game is one you can install and play without paying a purchase price. That is a real thing and not a trick, but it is not the same as a game with nothing to buy inside it, which is why Step 5 exists. The distinction matters enough that Step 1 spends its first section on it.
Where Crossout appears in the course, and why
A course about a category needs one specific thing to point at, or every sentence turns into a hypothetical. The example used here is Crossout, which the vendor describes as a free-to-play MMO vehicle-combat game set in post-apocalyptic realities, built around vehicles that players construct and modify themselves. It appears in Step 2 because the vendor states it runs on Windows and Linux and not on macOS, and in Step 3 because signing up involves confirming an email address.
Links to it are paid affiliate links, labelled every time. Blank Index is not Crossout's official site, not its reseller, and not connected to its publisher in any way other than that link.
Visit the Crossout websitePaid affiliate link. Blank Index is paid a commission if you create and confirm an account after following it. The course does not depend on your doing so.
Official Australian sources used in this course
Where a step touches something a government body publishes, the step links to that body rather than paraphrasing it. The Australian Classification Board publishes the classification of games made available in Australia. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes general guidance on keeping devices and accounts secure. Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, collects and publishes information about current scams. The eSafety Commissioner publishes material on online safety, including for families. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner oversees privacy law. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission administers the Australian Consumer Law.
How this course is written and kept current
The course was written as one piece by the I&M ALEX s.r.o. editorial team, in the order you read it, so each step only uses words the previous steps have defined. There are no guest contributors and no named instructors.
Statements about hardware are written as general guidance that should hold for years. Statements about the example game are limited to what its vendor says, and statements about Australian law link to the body responsible. The About page sets out the method in full, including the commercial relationship behind the affiliate links.
Short questions and answers
Do I need to read the steps in order?
You do not have to, but each step assumes the words defined in the step before it. Reading in order takes about an hour and a half and saves re-reading.
Does the course cost anything?
No. Every page is readable without an account, a payment or an email address, and there is nothing on this site to sign up for.
Do I need to be good with computers?
No. Every term is defined the first time it appears. Step 2 is the most technical and it is written for someone who has never opened their computer's system information panel.
Why does the course mention a specific game?
Crossout is used as the one concrete example so the steps are not abstract, and the links to it are paid affiliate links. The commission is explained on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
Is there a certificate at the end?
There is no certificate, no badge and no record of who has read what. This is reading material with checklists, not accredited training.
Before you move on
Work through Checklist 0 above, then open Step 1. If you would rather see all five checklists first, they are gathered on the checklists page, which prints cleanly on two sheets.