Casual games are multiplying like weeds. But Heyzap can embed them on any web site via a widget (a light web application).
With a few clicks, you can embed the code in your site and “gameify” it. Games are sticky. They’re engaging and often a lot more fun than most business-oriented web sites. Heyzap’s widgets are fairly democratic — big brands can use them, but so can your average user who wants, say, a favorite flash game embedded on a MySpace page.
It’s a good deal for game publishers and developers because it’s a way to distribute games to a far wider audience than they otherwise might reach. Developers can upload their games directly into the site. Heyzap takes a cut, the game developers or publishers get a cut, and so does Mochi Media, which embeds ads in the games.
So far, Heyzap has put together a database of more than 4,000 games that can be sorted into categories like sports or puzzles. By organizing the games, Heyzap says it’s something like a YouTube of flash games. (Of course, Kongregate, which aggregates user-created games, already has that nickname).
Immad Akhund and Jude Gomila founded the San Francisco company. It has funding from Y Combinator. The company expects to look for money later. It will face some serious competition on the web from the likes of Wild Tangent, Oberon Media, Addicting Games, Games2Win, GameCurry, and the aforementioned Kongregate. NeoEdge does something similar with widgets, but NeoEdge focuses mainly on downloadable games.
Akhund previous founded Clickpass and sold that a couple of months ago to Synthasite.