Zynga CEO Mark Pincus's approval rating is a hair above Obama's

Look at this way, Mr. Pincus: At least you don't have to make decisions that impact the entire planet--just 3,000 employees. Glass Door, a career services firm, reports that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has a 46 percent approval rating among employees, according to VentureBeat. Of course, that means more than half of his workers might not like him very much.

The average CEO has an approval rating of 62 percent, according to Glass Door. (CEOs like Yahoo's former Carol Bartz had an approval rating of 33 percent before she was given the boot.) As a result of Pincus's below-average approval rating, the company has an overall rating of 2.6, while Glass Door says that the average is 3.1. However, the survey only includes the responses of 20 Zynga employees--tiny compared to the company's overall workforce.

At any rate, the report includes comments from those surveyed that might serve to paint a better picture. Take this Zynga software engineer, for instance: "You'll work 8-18 hours per day 5-7 days per week. Company leaders demand creativity of employees after overworking them, and ignores most ideas that don't follow the same technique/code base that most of their games currently use. Not much of a social life."

If anything, comments like these echo recent reports from both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Of course, stories, reports and surveys like these are bound to crop up as Zynga approaches its initial public offering. (With that, grains of salt to be taken.) Besides, when you try too hard for your employees' affection, you turn into this guy.

[Image Credit: Jeff Chiu / AP]

How do you feel about Mark Pincus based on what you've heard or read? Do you think these reports and surveys will affect the company at all?

Noah's Ark hits Port Facebook, social games go crazy for Christians

When Sean Ryan said that Christians were an untapped audience for Facebook games, developers listened. And thus, we have the third biblical Facebook game to hit in the past two months: Noah's Ark.

VentureBeat reports that Making Fun--News Corp's social gaming arm--and Detonator Games have officially released the game to Facebook. However, the FarmVille-meets-Genesis social game looks have hit the platform earlier in August, according to its fan page.

Noah's Ark is the second game launched by Making Fun since it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp last year, and looks to cater to a woefully untapped audience that happens to be one of Facebook's largest. The game tasks players with creating--you guessed it--a farm of sorts to attract new animals to Noah's build site. Then, players must build their own Ark to prepare for the imminent worldwide flood.

Of course, players are governed by Energy and can buy boosts and other items with Facebook Credits. Noah's Ark will also test your knowledge of the story through trivia questions provided by Zondervan, a Christian publisher and News Corp subsidiary. (Finally, that Catholic education comes in handy!) And regardless of whether the game takes off--it sits now at over 260,000 monthly players and is growing steadily--Making Fun is committed to releasing games regularly.

Noah's Ark gameplay
"It's part of our plan to bring new and different games to the market that no one else is doing," Making Fun CEO John Welch told VentureBeat. "Our aim is to put out really high-quality titles in partnership with a variety of developers." Welch also said that the publisher will continue to release games through outside developers like Detonator Games, and that includes iPhone games, one of which will be a sports game.

Noah's Ark plays much like the FarmVilles and FrontierVilles of yore, but with a far smoother presentation and an interesting end goal: The Ark. As players gather new animals and materials, they will contribute to building the Ark throughout 10 stages. And there is an unbelievable amount of animals to collect across seven wildlife habitats. As players reach out beyond the limits of their small farmland, which is all visible on screen--but grayed out--they will learn how to attract new animals.

The game is a bit too biblically-charged for my tastes, and it doesn't do quite enough to differentiate itself from the "FarmVille meets the Bible" comparisons. Regardless, kudos to Making Fun and Detonator Games for exploring a relatively new subject matter in Facebook games. And considering 42 percent of Facebook users are Christian, the audience is certainly there.

Click here to play Noah's Ark on Facebook Now >

Have you tried this biblical Facebook game yet? What do you think of the influx of religious social games as of late? Sound off in the comments. 2 Comments