Nick Gravelyn

So Xbox LIVE Community Games is almost live. The submission process has been launched so you can get your game up and ready for the November 19th launch. There is, however, a key factor lots of people seem to forget about:

TESTING

Yes, that got bold and italics because it’s that important. We’ve already seen a few people submitting games to review and, wouldn’t you know it? Most of them are quickly rejected for bugs that would have been easily found during playtesting.

“But Nick,” you ask, “I only have one Xbox 360, one TV, and no memory card. How can I possibly test my game without sending it to peer review?” Glad you asked.

The XNA team has put into place a new Playtest feature on the Creators Club Online website. It functions a lot like submission in that you get to upload your CCGAME to the site, but unlike peer review, this functionality is intended for you to upload and test your game. So many people are skipping right over this opportunity to get your game tested by a bunch of people assuming (generally incorrectly so) that their game is bug-free and ready to go.

So please, when you finish your masterpiece and want to submit it, stick it in Playtest for a few days first. We want to avoid clogging up the Peer Review system with broken games and now that there’s an easy-to-use, official system for getting your CCGAME out to a bunch of developers for testing, there is no excuse to put a game into Peer Review that won’t pass on the first try.