Gamasutra expert blogs: From brand recognition to deployment strategy

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including the two faces of brands in the game industry, deployment strategies for free demos, and more.] In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the latest official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs The two faces of brands in the game industry (Josh Bycer) Brand recognition is important in any consumer based industry, and Josh Bycer says the video game industry is no exception. However, there is always the danger of misusing brands which this post examines two of those ways. Defender's Quest deployment strategy (Lars Doucet) Most free demos aren't as easy to play as they should be. Brain Juice Games' Lars Doucet describes some things his team did to fix that with its recent release Defender's Quest. Depth versus variety: A fundamental change in game playing in the past 30-40 years (Lewis Pulsipher) 30-40 years ago, many hobby game players looked for gameplay depth (and occasionally narrative depth) in their games. Lewis Pulsipher says most game players now don’t look for gameplay depth but look instead for variety, which is quite a different thing. It's not piracy - It's free-to-play (Ryan Creighton) Ryan Creighton shares several ideas Old Media can stand to learn from New Media, piracy, and SOPA/PIPA.