Step 1 of 5

Step 1 — What "free to play" means and what it does not

Where the phrase comes from

"Free to play" is a sales model, not a promise about your bank account. It describes a game you can obtain, install and start playing without paying for the game itself. That is the whole of what the phrase guarantees. Everything else — whether there are purchases inside, whether they matter, whether you ever need them — varies from one title to the next and has to be checked for each one.

For about thirty years before this model became common, a computer game was bought the way a book is bought: one payment, one copy, and the shop had no further interest in you. The free-to-play model moved the payment from the front door to somewhere inside the house. Nothing about that is sinister on its own, and plenty of free games ask for nothing at all. It does mean, though, that "free" on the front page answers a different question from the one most newcomers think it answers.

So the useful habit, and the point of this step, is to translate the phrase every time you see it. "Free to play" means: the download costs nothing and the account costs nothing. It does not say what happens next.

If the game is free, what is being sold

A game that charges nothing to install still has staff, servers and electricity bills, so something is being sold. In this category it is usually one or more of four things: time, convenience, appearance, or variety.

Time is sold when progress that would take many hours of play can also be bought outright. Convenience is sold when a limit — how many matches you can play for full rewards in a day, how much storage your account has — can be lifted with a payment. Appearance is sold when the item changes how something looks and nothing else: paint, decals, a different shape of part. Variety is sold when a payment grants equipment or content that is otherwise obtained slowly or not at all.

Knowing which of the four a particular game leans on tells you more about what playing it will feel like than any review score. A game that mostly sells appearance can be played for years without spending. A game that mostly sells time will keep showing you the clock.

The four places money normally enters

Those four things are sold through a small number of recurring mechanisms. You will meet these again in Step 5, where the question becomes what to do about them. For now, just learn to recognise them.

A fifth place money can enter is outside the game entirely: third-party sites that sell accounts, items or currency. Buying from those is a different transaction with a different set of risks, and it usually breaches the game's own terms. If you ever consider it, the description of current scam types at Scamwatch is worth reading first.

Four things "free" does not mean

It does not mean free of cost to run. A game downloads once and then keeps downloading: updates, patches, new content. On a metered internet plan that is a real cost, and it is the reason Step 2 asks you to write down your monthly data allowance before anything else.

It does not mean free of an account. Nearly every online game requires a registration, which means handing over at least an email address and agreeing to terms. What that involves is Step 3.

It does not mean permanent. An online game runs on someone else's servers. The company decides how long those servers run. This is not a reason to avoid the category; it is a reason to think of money spent inside a game as spent, not stored.

It does not mean free of your time. This is the honest one. The design goal of a free game is that you keep coming back, because a player who comes back is a player who might eventually buy something. Deciding in advance how many evenings a week you want to give it is a sensible thing to do before you install, not after.

The words you will meet

Client

The program you install on your own computer. It draws the game and talks to the company's servers. A game client is ordinary software; it is installed and removed the same way other programs are.

Launcher

A small program that logs you in, checks for updates and then starts the client. Some games have one, some do not.

MMO

Massively multiplayer online: many players share one persistent world that keeps running whether you are logged in or not.

Session

One period of play, from logging in to logging out. Used in this course to talk about the first hour.

Cosmetic

An item that changes appearance only and has no effect on how the game plays.

Patch

An update to the client. Patches are downloaded, which is why they count against a data allowance.

System requirements

The vendor's statement of what a computer needs in order to run the game. Usually given as a minimum and a recommended set. The subject of Step 2.

The example this course uses

From here on the course needs something concrete to point at, so it uses one product as its running example: Crossout. Describing it is not recommending it. The description below is limited to what the vendor states about it, which is the only source this course uses for product facts.

Crossout is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game set in post-apocalyptic realities. Its distinguishing feature is that the vehicles are constructed by the players themselves, and can be modified in shape and armour, in armament and support systems, and with cosmetic accessories. The vendor describes the possibilities for modifying a vehicle's appearance and parameters as running into the thousands.

Two practical facts come with it, both of which shape later steps. It runs on desktop Windows and Linux; no macOS version is stated, so a Mac owner should treat Step 2 and Step 4 as background reading. And the sign-up process it uses is the common one in this category: create an account, confirm the email address, then log in — which is exactly the sequence Step 3 takes apart.

Anything beyond that — what the purchases cost, how long a match runs, how big the download is today — is not stated in the material this course relies on, so the course does not state it either. The vendor's own site is where those details live.

The worked example household

The hypothetical household introduced on the home page reaches Step 1 with a reasonable question: a housemate has said the game is free, so why would there be anything to work out? Running the four mechanisms past it takes five minutes and produces three notes: the plan is metered so patches matter, one of the three computers is a Mac and is therefore out, and nobody in the house has decided what, if anything, they would be willing to spend.

None of those notes requires a decision yet. That is the point of a first step: it turns a vague "it's free" into three specific questions, each of which a later step answers. This household is an illustration written for the course, not a real one.

Checklist 1 — Understanding the offer

Work through these on your own before Step 2. Nothing is saved; the boxes are printed, not interactive. The same list appears on the All checklists page.

• Write down, in one sentence, what you expect the game to cost you in the first month.
• Find the game's own page and read its description of the game — not a third party's summary of it.
• Check whether the page says anything about purchases inside the game, and note which of the four mechanisms it mentions.
• Check which operating systems the vendor lists. If yours is not listed, stop here; that is a complete answer.
• Note whether a separate launcher or an account on another platform is required.
• Decide, before installing, how many evenings a week you want to give it.
• Decide whether your answer to the spending question is "nothing", "a set amount" or "not decided yet" — all three are valid, but pick one.
• If anyone under 18 will use the account, note that and read Step 5 before Step 2.