Leading social games studio Zynga has endured some stormy weather as of late but as Venturebeat mentions today, they have recently made several, key hires to batten down the hatches and, hopefully, right its proverbial ship.

Newly appointed President of Zynga Studios Alex Garden is the driving force behind these hires that run the gamut across all disciplines. This infusion of new blood comes mostly from outside the video game industry itself, which is never a bad thing.

The new faces at Zynga are:

• Tony Leech is the new creative director for Zynga Studios. He will provide narrative guidance across all of Zynga's games. He directed and helped produce several movies over the last decade including "Hoodwinked!," "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil," and "Escape from Planet Earth."
• Jim Pearson will be the art director for the Ville franchise. He previously served as art director and production designer at Pixar, working on such classics as "Toy Story 2" and "Finding Nemo."
• Two of the new hires come from location-based entertainment startup Red Robot Labs. Zynga has brought on Red Robot's co-founder Pete Hawley as general manager and vice president of creative. And Zynga has also added Red Robot's John Davison as senior director of network content. Davison has an extensive game journalism background, and Hawley is an industry vet with experience at EA, Lionhead Studios and Sony among others.
• Another new face is Julian Widdows, the general manager at Zynga's NaturalMotion, which is working on a new IP. He was previously head of the Codemasters Racing development studio which worked on games in the "Dirt" series.
• Lastly, Zynga has hired Catherine Silvestre as the general manager at NaturalMotion. She previously held leadership positions at Warner Bros., DeNA/ngmoco and Glu Mobile.

Only time will tell if these new people, and the new ideas that come with them, can put Zynga back at the top of the social gaming food chain.