Brief 05-4Step 4 of 5

Step 4 — Installing, and the first session at the controls

This step is deliberately general. Every game in this category arranges its menus differently, so what follows describes the things that are true across the category rather than where any one publisher has put a particular button. Your job is to recognise the shapes, not to memorise a layout.

Where the installer should come from

There is one rule here and it is not negotiable: take the installer from the publisher's own website, or from a major platform store the publisher names on that website. Nowhere else.

The reason is that a game client is a large program you are about to give permission to run on your machine. Sites that offer "mirrors", "faster downloads", "cracked" versions or bundled installers are the standard way that unwanted software reaches ordinary people. The Australian Cyber Security Centre says much the same about software generally: get it from the vendor or an official store.

Two smaller habits go with it. If a search engine shows an advertisement above the real result, scroll past it to the publisher's own domain. And if the installer you downloaded wants to install something else alongside the game — a browser toolbar, a "system optimiser", a second search engine — stop and start again from the real source, because that is not what a game publisher ships.

What the launcher is doing

The file you download is often small. Run it and it installs a launcher, which then downloads the real client — the several gigabytes of models, maps and sounds. This surprises people who thought they had already finished.

Expect the first download to take a while, and expect it to resume rather than restart if it is interrupted. Expect the launcher to check for updates every time you open it afterwards, and occasionally to spend ten minutes doing so before it will let you in. That is normal for the category: the publisher's server and your client must hold the same version or the match would disagree with itself.

Two practical notes. Leave more free space than the download size, because an update usually downloads before it replaces what it updates. And if you are on a connection with a monthly data limit, check the size before you start — a large client plus its first few updates can be a meaningful share of a month.

The settings pass before you play

When the client finally opens, resist the pull of the big obvious button and spend five minutes in the settings. Doing this first is the difference between a good first hour and giving up.

1. Find the graphics or video settings and note what preset is selected. Most clients guess a preset for your machine, and the guess is often optimistic.
2. Set the resolution to match your screen, then choose a lower overall preset than the one selected — medium if it chose high. You can raise it later once you know the game runs.
3. Turn on the frame-rate counter if the client offers one. It is the only honest feedback you will get about whether a change helped.
4. Find the audio settings and set the master volume somewhere sensible before the first explosion rather than after it.
5. Find the controls or key bindings page and read it, without changing anything yet.
6. Look for the accessibility options — subtitles, colourblind modes, user-interface scale, camera-shake and motion toggles. These are frequently present and almost never advertised.
7. Look for the privacy or social settings and decide who can message you, who can see your profile, and whether voice chat is on. Turn voice chat off until you want it.
8. Save, then leave the settings page and look for the tutorial rather than for a live match.

Picture quality, and what each setting costs

You do not need to understand graphics programming to make good choices. You need to know which settings are expensive and which are nearly free, so that you spend your machine's effort where you will notice it.

Which settings to reach for first

Resolution	The most expensive single setting. Matching your screen looks best; dropping below it is the heaviest lever you have if nothing else works.
Shadow quality	Usually expensive and rarely missed in a fast match. One of the first to lower.
Anti-aliasing	Smooths jagged edges. Moderately expensive; lowering it costs you little at a distance.
View or draw distance	Expensive, and it can matter for play in a game where spotting something far away is the point. Lower it last, not first.
Texture quality	Depends mostly on video memory rather than raw speed. If your graphics chip has little memory, this one hurts.
Vertical sync	Removes tearing in the image but can add input delay. Try it both ways and keep what feels better.
Motion blur and camera shake	Nearly free to turn off, and worth turning off if they make you uncomfortable.

Change one thing at a time and watch the frame-rate counter. Changing five settings at once teaches you nothing about which of them mattered.

Controls

Games in this category typically offer more than one control scheme — a simplified one, where the machine helps you point the vehicle where you are looking, and a fuller one that gives you direct control of more axes. Beginners are generally better served by the simplified scheme. It is not a lesser version of the game; it is the version where you spend your attention on what is happening rather than on staying upright.

Keyboard and mouse is the default and works for everything. A gamepad suits some vehicle types and some people's hands better. A flight stick is a large purchase for a game you have played for forty minutes, and the sensible order is to try the game first and buy hardware later, if at all.

Whatever you use, find the key bindings page early and learn five keys before you learn fifty: move, look, the main action, the map, and the key that pauses or leaves. Everything else can be looked up when you need it. If a binding is awkward for your hands, change it — rebinding is not cheating, and most clients let you reset to defaults if you make a mess of it.

The tutorial

Nearly every game in this category includes a guided first session: a short, controlled scenario, usually without other players, that teaches you how to move, how to aim and how the match ends. It is sometimes called a tutorial, sometimes a training mission, sometimes a basics course. It is almost always optional, and skipping it is the most common mistake beginners make.

Do it anyway, for three reasons. It is the only time the game will explain its own vocabulary to you. It is a safe place to discover that your settings are wrong, before thirty strangers are depending on you. And it tells you honestly, within about fifteen minutes, whether you enjoy the basic act of controlling the thing — which is the question the whole course has been building towards.

If the tutorial is confusing, that is information about the game rather than about you. Some are excellent and some are perfunctory. A perfunctory one usually means the game expects you to learn from other players, which is worth knowing before you commit an evening.

The first few matches

Expect to be poor at it. Every player in the match has done this more often than you, and the early sessions are mostly about learning where things are. Set the goal low — survive, or complete one objective — rather than aiming to win.

Expect text chat, and possibly voice chat, from strangers. If it becomes abusive, use the client's mute and report functions, which exist in essentially every game of this kind. Serious online abuse can also be reported to the eSafety Commissioner, which has formal schemes for adult cyber abuse and for cyberbullying of children. Muting first and reporting second is a reasonable order.

And expect the first session to be longer than you planned, because the download, the settings and the tutorial all come before the playing. An evening is realistic. Step 5 is about what happens after that evening.

If it runs badly

1. Close everything else — browser tabs included. A browser with thirty tabs open is a real competitor for memory.
2. Check the graphics driver. An out-of-date driver is a common cause of poor performance, and the update comes from the graphics chip maker or your system's own update tool.
3. Lower the preset one notch and watch the frame-rate counter before changing anything else.
4. Lower shadows, then anti-aliasing, then resolution, in that order, one at a time.
5. If the picture is fine but the controls feel delayed, the problem is probably latency, not the machine. Try a wired connection, and check which server region you are connected to.
6. If the client crashes repeatedly, look for the publisher's own support pages before anyone else's. They know what their own error messages mean.

Before you move on

You have installed from the publisher, configured the picture before playing rather than after, learned five keys, finished the tutorial and played a little. The remaining question is not technical at all: what this thing will cost you in time and money over the next year, and what the household rules around it should be. That is Step 5.