Talk:Venetian Blinds (video game)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet talk 09:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

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• ... that Venetian Blinds uses Venetian blinds to simulate Venetian blinds? Source: "As the name implies the Venetian Blinds demo isn't a game, but a short program that simulates a pair of Venetian blinds!" (for what Venetian Blinds simulates); "We covered it with a venetian blind effect that animated up and down (complete with the stacking up of the slats as they were gathered up by the blind mechanism)." (for use of the Venetian blinds technique)
  • ALT1: ... that Venetian Blinds was developed by Activision in response to a lawsuit from Atari, Inc.? Source: "Atari decided to go forward with their frankly frivolous lawsuit ... And so, David Crane decided to make the most of a shitty situation, by at least trying to have some fun at their corporate bully’s expense."
  • ALT2: ... that the development of Venetian Blinds has been considered "one of gaming's greatest moments of pettiness"? Source: The title of this GameRevolution article
  • ALT3: ... that Venetian Blinds was developed in 1982 but was not publicly released until 2003? Source: "In any case, that’s how Venetian Blinds managed to somehow technically become a commercial product in 2003 — after two decades of nearly complete secrecy."
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Campbell's Soup Cans II

Created by AdoTang (talk). Self-nominated at 00:54, 25 September 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Venetian Blinds (video game); consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Article is new enough and long enough. What makes AtariAge/AtariProto, #7 and Bad Game Hall of Fame reliable sources? I don't see Chopper Command, Seaquest and Pitfall in #2, nor any mention of Venetian Blinds being misplaced in Game Room. Also can't find the rumor about lawyers or the 1982 date of the settlement. A QPQ that considers a citation needed tag not a problem seems questionable to me. About the hooks here, they are all based on sources I questioned above, I like the first best although I think the second "Venetian" should be lowercase. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:20, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Apologies if this sounds rude, but did you actually check the sources? Two of the sources speak critically about Venetian Blinds being included in the Game Room, the lawyer rumor is repeated in two sources and fact-checked in like two others, and I'm fairly certain the 1982 settlement date is also mentioned in the sources.

As for the source reliability, these are the sources; there's literally nothing else aside from blogs, archive sites, and an article that describes the game in very sarcastic terms. Several of these sources had the involvement of Activision employees or cite official Activision materials, because as noted in #2, Crane did not go to the press with this game's story. If I removed these sources there would only be like, one or two sources that directly address Venetian Blinds, because the pitfall (hehe) of obscure, niche topics is that there are no sources about them because they're obscure and niche.

That said, I will concede that the mention of other games in #2 is inaccurate (it was from another source I removed but I doubt that was particularly reliable seeing it was a download archive site of sorts), and that the QPQ might not have been fully looked into (will update to press more about the citation needed tag). AdoTang (talk) 12:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Regarding source reliability, these being the only sources available does not automatically make them reliable sources. Do they have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy? Are they commonly cited by e.g mainstream newspapers or academic sources? That sort of thing. Point taken on rumours and 1982 though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, I'd say these ones are about as good as they can be:

• AtariProtos is run by Matt Reichert and was the first source to reveal Venetian Blinds's existence. It had bad information at first, but received that information from an Activision employee before the actual story was released in Activision Anthology; the story was later corrected. As for Reichert himself, apparently he's a prominent figure in the Atari retro gaming community and has written things for modern Atari, so there's that for a reputation.
• Bad Game Hall of Fame is the most comprehensive source on Venetian Blinds I could find, and it seems pretty reliable, seeing it uses sources and most things in the article can be tied back to existing information. What's written throughout the site seems honestly very well-researched and professional for a one-person operation; see their article on the Ouya as an example.
• AtariAge and its forums are Thomas Jentzsch and Matt Reichert released Venetian Blinds in 2005. According to Reichert, AtariAge is where he releases Atari ROMs, so this is more or less just proof the ROMs were actually released this way.

They obviously aren't commonly cited by mainstream newspapers and academic sources because they're video game fansites, but Reichert has been in the news before, and many websites (including numerous sources here) more or less repeated AtariPros's first story about Venetian Blinds but didn't really cite them. AdoTang (talk) 21:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

on the reliability thing. Original hook or ALT1 JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 10:31, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

But, it doesn't. From the source: the Venetian Blinds program doesn’t even demonstrate the actual venetian blind technique in question. Also, from common sense: the venetian blind technique is a way to fit extra sprites in a row by chopping them up into scanlines separated by empty space. Does this demo have any sprites that appear to have stripes of empty space? Does it have any sprites at all? No, it does not.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:28, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Change the article to be about the programming technique

I'd suggest to make this article's primary topic to be the "Venetian blinds" programming technique, with the technology demo being mentioned as a by-product of the lawsuit in an appropriate section. The current focus on the demo as the main topic skews the reality by making the demo more important than the technique itself, which was used in several VCS video games. Even the current title of the article is misleading, because this is not a video game, but a technology demo (even if it's interactive). Calling it a video game is as much of a stretch as calling the real Venetian blinds a game. --Krótki (talk) 08:32, 9 October 2023 (UTC)