It seems there’s a lot of confusion about submitting your games on the XNA Creators Club website. Since the Peer Review piece is what’s been stressed so much over the past couple of months maybe it’s no wonder there’s been some problems but hopefully this post and others like it will help spread the word.

There’s two separate processes for submitting your game, Play Test and Peer Review. The former is probably what most people should be using. The Play Test submission is meant for games that aren’t complete and ready to be put on Xbox Live Community Games. If you know there are bugs in your game that you want people to help test or if you aren’t sure that your game will work properly (for example, the issue with having a memory unit and hard drive and having to pick between them for storing game info) or if you just want to get feedback on a game, the Play Test type of submission is what you want. You should not be using the Peer Review type of submission unless your game is complete, as bug free as you can make it, and ready to be put on XBLCG.

So, how do you specify which to use? First, I’d recommend reading the page on submitting your game. Here’s a screenshot of the final step in submitting your game. Note at the bottom Playtest is selected by default. Unless you’re sure your game is ready to be purchased and played by the community this is the option you want.

If you want your game to be looked at, ensure you use the proper option, otherwise you’ll end up getting responses in the forum thread that’s created when you submit your game telling you your game isn’t ready and to resubmit it under Play Test. More than likely it’s not going to be approved anyway and you’ll just end up having wasted days or weeks. The community is primed and ready to play all the games that can be submitted, but you need to make sure it’s something worth playing. Doing so benefits you and the community.