Mike DeLaet, President of Ares Interactive, shared with us why Ares was created, how they analyze games to do the scaling, the challenges behind the mobile market, and how they solve them.

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Mike DeLaet, President of Ares Interactive, discusses the company's approach to scaling free-to-play mobile games. Key themes include using proven core gameplay loops, testing KPIs early (Day 1 retention, CPI), and optimizing LTV curves through live ops and economy tuning. DeLaet addresses how the mobile market has shifted post-ATT and GDPR, emphasizing capital efficiency over growth-at-all-costs. He also covers IP as a risk mitigation tool, technical challenges like device fragmentation and SDK management, and the growing role of AI in development pipelines. Looking ahead to 2026, he predicts genre hybridization, faster AI-assisted prototyping, and a focus on multi-year LTV over launch spikes.

Ares Interactive Talks About Games for the Mobile Market