Heyzap: The YouTube of Casual Games

The Youtube site might have streaming videos covered, but what about games? A site where anyone can visit, play a few, and even share it with all their friends. That’s what Heyzap is, a Youtube for casual games. GotGame has your burning questions covered through an exclusive interview with Heyzap founders Immad Akhund and Jude Gomila, whose London accents charmed us into loving the idea, not that they needed to.

Publishers and users don’t have a site where they can quickly access great, online casual games, but Heyzap is going to change the landscape by providing just that. Co-founders Immad Akhund and Jude Gomila have built a player where everyone can play more than 4000+ games handpicked by the duo. You’ll also be able to easily embed these online games through a provided code into your website, blog, post, whatever. Akhund noted that the games are the best on the internet, and will continue to be thanks to Heyzap’s commitment of regularly aggregating and filtering their games from major portals and game developers. Heyzap also takes another step and aggregates the associated meta data and using it to constantly showcase the most popular games on their website.

And they won’t be the only ones uploading games, all users and game developers can do the same, anytime. This is a great way for indie game developers to get their name out, much like those inspiring musicians flooding Youtube. Heyzap provides them the ability for extra distribution and monetization via in-game advertising.

We asked Akhund and Gomila how this was possible. How do you keep such a large operation going? The idea of Heyzap was able to get off the ground thanks to funding by Y Combinator, a firm specializing in early start-up projects. Long-term profit will be done by using Mochi Media to provide in-game advertising through video ads, played while a game is loading. Also, Heyzap offers licensing options for publishers who have no need for external advertising.

And the future of Heyzap? They have some big plans coming up, including a customizable widget and a games API, or application programming interface, which will allow users to fully customize Heyzap’s player by changing its visual looks and more. This will allow Heyzap to create a deeper level of integration of their uploaded games and allowing each user to be unique from others.

And would you believe it’s all done by only two people? Akhund and Gomila, two young chaps from over the pond, conjured up the idea because, hey, they love casual games, and who doesn’t? The casual games market is large and expanding. In fact, the estimated $2.2 billion global market is predicted to grow up to 25% in the coming years. And since more than 217 million people play online casual games, it’s a profitable market. but this isn’t their first time handling such a big project.

Akhund founded Clickpass.com, a site which eliminates the need for multiple passwords and usernames on the internet. Since launch, it received more than 100,000 users and was acquired by Sythasite in December of 2008, leaving Akhund to pursue other goals. As for Gomila, he had a successful stint creating Sugar Global, a digital photo frame brand. After, he went on to found a charity gaming site. Heyzap is in good hands.

So check the site out and have a look around. Give your support to the two men and what could easily be the next “Youtube”.