Mute Spectrum
Bench 09-0

All checklists

Six lists: one to do before you read anything, then one for each of the five steps. They are printed as empty boxes for a pen, because nothing on this site stores what you have ticked.

How to use them

Each list belongs to a step and assumes you have read it. On their own the lists are terse by design — a reminder rather than an explanation — so if an item does not make sense, the step it came from explains why it is there. Every heading below links back.

Work through a list at your own computer rather than on screen beside this page, and in order. The order is the point: the pre-course list and Steps 1 to 3 all happen before anything is downloaded, which is what keeps the download from being a wasted evening. Three of the five steps need no software at all.

Tick with a pen. This page deliberately has no interactive checkboxes, because storing your ticks would mean storing something about you in your browser, and this site stores nothing at all — no cookies, no local storage, no accounts. The printed boxes do the same job with no trade.

Nothing here is a test and there is no pass mark. Items you cannot complete are useful information rather than failures: a disk figure that will not stretch, a classification record that settles who plays, a spending ceiling someone in the household disagrees with. Each of those is better discovered on paper than at eleven o'clock on a Friday night.

If you are using these lists for a household rather than only for yourself, two items are worth doing together rather than alone: the classification record in Step 3, and the spending rule in the same step. Both are easier as a conversation at the kitchen table than as a decision one person announces later.

Finally, none of the items requires a purchase. The course can be completed from start to finish without spending anything, and where a product is named it is named as an example of the category — and because the link to it funds this site, as the funding page explains in full.

Before anything else

  1. Check free space on the drive you would install to, and write the number down.
  2. Confirm the computer is a desktop or laptop running Windows, macOS or Linux.
  3. Find out whether your internet plan has a monthly data allowance, and how much is left.
  4. Tell anyone sharing the connection that a multi-gigabyte download is coming, and pick a time.
  5. Decide, before seeing any store page, the most you would spend in a year, in Australian dollars.
  6. Note that no step of this course requires you to spend anything.

Step 1 — What the genre is

  1. Write one sentence describing what this kind of game is, in your own words.
  2. Decide which you want: a short session twice a week, or a long-term goal.
  3. Accept that the first week of matches will go badly.
  4. Note the two numbers Step 2 will need: free disk space and any monthly data allowance.
  5. Decide whether anyone else in the household is part of the decision, and tell them.
  6. Confirm you have written a spending figure, or do it before Step 3.
  7. Check that the machine is a desktop or laptop.
  8. Note where the eSafety Commissioner's guidance lives, before you need it.

Step 2 — Check your desktop computer

  1. Record the operating system and version, and confirm it is Windows, macOS or Linux.
  2. Record the graphics processor name and its video memory.
  3. Record installed system memory in gigabytes.
  4. Record free space on the target drive, and whether it is solid-state or mechanical.
  5. Compare each value against the vendor's own requirements table; write pass or fail.
  6. Add at least a quarter again to the stated install size, for updates.
  7. Check the download fits inside what is left of any monthly data allowance.
  8. Apply system updates, update the graphics driver from the hardware maker, restart.
  9. Use a cable instead of wireless if that is possible.
  10. If two or more values failed, write what would need to change and pause rather than cancel.

Step 3 — Accounts, ratings and spending

  1. Decide which email address the account uses; consider a dedicated one for games.
  2. Choose a public player name that identifies nothing about you.
  3. Plan to complete the email confirmation immediately.
  4. Set a long, unique password and turn on two-factor authentication if offered.
  5. Look the title up with the Australian Classification Board and read the consumer advice line.
  6. Decide who in the household may use the account, and whether separate accounts are better.
  7. Write the twelve-month spending ceiling in Australian dollars.
  8. Write the minimum hours you will play before spending anything.
  9. Decide how randomised purchases sit with your rule; control who can spend if minors use the computer.
  10. Remove stored card details where the publisher allows it.
  11. Note where the ACCC and OAIC sites are.

Step 4 — First install and tutorial

  1. Create the account on the vendor's own site, using the details decided in Step 3.
  2. Complete the email confirmation now; check the spam folder if nothing arrives.
  3. Sign back in once to prove the account works, before downloading anything large.
  4. Take the installer only from the publisher or an official distribution platform.
  5. Choose the install location deliberately, on the drive measured in Step 2.
  6. Start the game data download when the connection is idle, and leave it.
  7. Set a conservative graphics preset and your screen's native resolution before playing.
  8. Turn on any frame rate display the game offers.
  9. Run the tutorial in the most forgiving control mode, twice if allowed.
  10. Locate the mute and report controls before entering any match.
  11. Write two lines about what to change next time, then close the game.
  12. Install no third-party tool, optimiser or patched installer at any point.

Step 5 — Settling in

  1. Put a fortnight checkpoint in your calendar on the first day you play.
  2. Keep default controls at first, noting only what catches you out.
  3. Change two or three bindings, not forty.
  4. Find the free-look control, place push-to-talk safely, move surrender and restart keys away.
  5. Note where update announcements appear, and expect to lose an occasional evening.
  6. Check free space on the game drive once a month.
  7. Keep card details off the account; convert in-game prices to Australian dollars before judging.
  8. Keep a dated list of spending and compare it with your ceiling.
  9. Learn the mute, chat-off and report controls, and use them.
  10. At the checkpoint, ask whether you are playing because you want to.
  11. If stopping: uninstall through the operating system, clear leftover data folders, handle the account separately.
  12. Turn off marketing email from any account you keep but no longer use.