Step 4 — Your first hour: install, settings and checking it works

What to do before the download starts

Three things, all small, all easier now than later.

First, get the installer from the publisher's own website or from a recognised store you already use, by typing the address yourself rather than following a link from a search advertisement or a video description. Download pages are widely imitated, and the imitation usually looks right.

Second, decide which drive the game goes on. If you have a solid-state drive with room, use it; loading will be quicker. If the only space is on a mechanical drive, that is fine, and loading screens will simply be longer.

Third, set aside an unhurried block of time. The first start of an online game usually includes an update, and sometimes a preparation pass that takes several minutes before anything happens. A first session squeezed into twenty minutes mostly consists of watching a progress bar belonging to the installer.

The installation order

Eight steps, in this order. Each one makes the next easier to diagnose if it fails.

1. Update your graphics driver from the graphics hardware maker's own site, or through your system's update tool. A great many first-run failures are an out-of-date driver and nothing else.
2. Restart the computer after the driver update, so the new driver is actually in use.
3. Check free disk space against the installed size one more time, leaving a few gigabytes of headroom.
4. Download the installer from the publisher's own site, typing the address yourself.
5. Run the installer and accept the default install location unless you have a reason to change it. Note where it puts the game.
6. Let the first launch finish its update without interrupting it, even if it appears to stall at a particular percentage for a while.
7. Sign in with the account from Step 3, and if a second factor is enabled, have your phone to hand.
8. Open the settings before playing, and work through the five below.

The first five settings to change

Game menus differ, but these five options exist in nearly all of them under one name or another.

1. Graphics preset

Start at low or medium even if your machine exceeded the recommended column. A smooth first session tells you the installation is sound; you can raise the settings afterwards, one at a time, and see what each one costs.

2. Resolution and display mode

Match the resolution to your monitor. Choose windowed or borderless mode for the first session — it makes the game far easier to leave if something goes wrong.

3. Volume, including voice chat

Set the overall volume before you are surprised by it, and set voice chat separately. Many games enable voice by default, and you may prefer it off while you are finding your way.

4. Chat and social settings

Look for options to restrict messages to friends, to mute by default, and to block or report another player. Finding the report function before you need it is worth sixty seconds. The eSafety Commissioner, Australia's independent regulator for online safety, publishes guidance on dealing with online abuse, including in games.

5. Accessibility and controls

Subtitles, text size, colour-blind modes and key rebinding are usually in the same menu. Changing a control you dislike in the first ten minutes is much easier than relearning the habit later.

Telling a connection problem from a slow computer

These two problems feel similar in the moment and have nothing in common underneath. Learning to separate them is the most useful diagnostic habit in this step.

Change one thing at a time and play for a few minutes between changes. Changing five settings at once and finding an improvement tells you nothing about which one did it.

The two numbers worth watching

Most games can display both numbers somewhere in the settings. Turn them on for the first session. They convert "it feels bad" into a fact you can act on, and they let you tell whether a change helped.

What a reasonable first session looks like

• 0–20 minutesDriver update, restart, download. Mostly waiting.
• 20–35 minutesInstallation and the first launch update. Still mostly waiting.
• 35–45 minutesSign in, then the five settings. Turn on the frame rate and latency display.
• 45–60 minutesWhatever introduction or tutorial the game provides, at low settings, watching the two numbers.
• At the endWrite down what the two numbers were, and anything that behaved oddly. That note is what makes the second session productive.

Do not spend anything in the first session. There is no benefit to it, and a purchase made before you know whether the game runs well on your machine is a purchase made without the one fact that matters most.

When something goes wrong

Work through this list in order; it runs from cheapest to most disruptive.

1. Restart the game. Then restart the computer.
2. Use the launcher's verify or repair function, which checks the installed files against the publisher's copy.
3. Check the publisher's official status or support page — the problem may be at their end and already known.
4. Lower the graphics settings further than you think is necessary, to establish whether the picture is the problem at all.
5. Reinstall the graphics driver cleanly, rather than installing over the old one.
6. Uninstall and reinstall the game, having checked disk space first.
7. Contact the publisher's support through the official site, including your six specification lines and what you have already tried.

Two things not to do: do not install a third-party "fix", "optimiser" or "booster" offered by a search result or a video description, and do not disable your security software to make an error message go away.

The worked example, continued

In the invented Melbourne household, the spare-room desktop gets a driver update and a restart before anything is downloaded. The installation runs, and the first launch spends eleven minutes on an update that appears stuck at 60 per cent for three of them. Nobody interrupts it, which turns out to be the right call.

They sign in, set the preset to low, choose windowed mode, turn voice chat off, and switch on the frame rate and latency display. The picture is smooth; the latency is higher than they expected. That tells them the connection, not the six-year-old computer, is the thing to look at — so they move the machine to a cable rather than Wi-Fi for the next session.

At the end they write two numbers and one sentence on a sticky note. Nobody has spent anything, and the household now knows more about its own computer than it did that morning.

Before you move on

You should now have a working installation, five settings deliberately chosen rather than accepted, and two numbers describing how it actually runs. Step 5 is about the part that lasts longer than the first hour: spending, randomised items, classification and time.