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AH On Screen: Wider Acceptance or Latest Fad?

The mention of documentaries brings this to mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S.A.:_The_Confederate_States_of_America), and questions as to how such a style (serious or spoof) might work in terms of audience appeal

From what I learned at TV school? Poorly. The entire reason the History Channel died in '04 was because the documentaries market hit saturation and started shrinking, and the market they targeted went poof. A mockumentary might work, but you still need to get a director with a solid feel for the narrative and visual elements you're selling, and we're right back to the Battleship Equation on the topic of TV: Visuals, writing, accuracy: pick two.
 
The mention of documentaries brings this to mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S.A.:_The_Confederate_States_of_America), and questions as to how such a style (serious or spoof) might work in terms of audience appeal. The above mockumentary was a decent attempt, but was noticeably handicapped budget-wise; if this had been solved, I have the feeling it could have gotten much wider notice

Mocku's do seem to do okay, if they're good and targeting something with an in-built audience - people rate American Vandal, spoofing true-crime docs on Netflix. I could see an alternate history mockumentary doing well but probably not as a subgenre, as each one would need its own specific angle, audience etc. The people who like C.S.A., with its barbed comments about America's history of race relations and history of the media about it, won't all show up to watch a mockumentary about (say) Ireland and an alternate history of church control.

(Thinking about it, mockumentary's like C.S.A. are the cinema equivalent of AH timelines that are written as various in-universe book excerpts!)
 
The entire reason the History Channel died in '04 was because the documentaries market hit saturation and started shrinking, and the market they targeted went poof.

I always figured it was the channel drift that really brought HC down (Ancient Aliens, IRT, Pawn Stars and all the rest of that crap). Good point on the director and equation issues; where exactly does the latter come from?
 
I always figured it was the channel drift that really brought HC down (Ancient Aliens, IRT, Pawn Stars and all the rest of that crap). Good point on the director and equation issues; where exactly does the latter come from?

The channel drift was to pack things up after the demographic issues happened; instead it made things worse. After the market dropped out, the money to make documentaries fell through too, and shortly after that came the prestige drop. Once that happened, the pool of directors stopped replacing and a lot of them retired, and it all crashed from there.

The Battleship Equation, meanwhile, comes from naval designers. Given a fixed mass and cost budget, the three defining characteristics of a battleship are speed, protection, and firepower. Spending more mass and money on one reduces the amount of the others you can use, so historically you'd get ships that focused on two things and did them fairly well.
 
Just a couple of "food-for-thought" questions, to keep this thread going:

1. Does AH ultimately translate better to the screen as an (apparently or bona fide) original idea (Ex: For All Mankind), or from written works (Ex: Man in the High Castle)?

2. Given how much more widespread AH is used in gaming (or appears to be, by comparison), and how it seems to have a wider potential/actual audience, is this the likelier and/or ideal "screen" medium for this genre, instead of TV, movies, or streaming?
 
1. Does AH ultimately translate better to the screen as an (apparently or bona fide) original idea (Ex: For All Mankind), or from written works (Ex: Man in the High Castle)?

Always, always, always presume a dedicated script for screen has more power than a conversion. Those are messy, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if there was a raving MITHC fan out there polishing his gewhr for a chance to whack the incompetent dimwit who cut out his precious subplots and memes.


2. Given how much more widespread AH is used in gaming (or appears to be, by comparison), and how it seems to have a wider potential/actual audience, is this the likelier and/or ideal "screen" medium for this genre, instead of TV, movies, or streaming?

This is a harder question by far. Considering AH is basically a tag in terms of consistency (that is, almost none) we have to narrow it down a lot. Is Wolfenstein AH? Is Kingdom Come: Deliverance AH? Can Otome games be technically AH with some fast window dressing? We need to corral this question in some before we can start answering it.
 
Just a couple of "food-for-thought" questions, to keep this thread going:

1. Does AH ultimately translate better to the screen as an (apparently or bona fide) original idea (Ex: For All Mankind), or from written works (Ex: Man in the High Castle)?

2. Given how much more widespread AH is used in gaming (or appears to be, by comparison), and how it seems to have a wider potential/actual audience, is this the likelier and/or ideal "screen" medium for this genre, instead of TV, movies, or streaming?
IDK about number 1, but I think that a big advantage that games have over movies and TV shows is that they can engage in a lot more worldbuilding and explore the setting more (this is particularly true of RPGs). Of course, the downside to this is that if the creators aren't good at worldbuilding it's a lot easier to notice with a video game than a TV show.
 
IDK about number 1, but I think that a big advantage that games have over movies and TV shows is that they can engage in a lot more worldbuilding and explore the setting more (this is particularly true of RPGs). Of course, the downside to this is that if the creators aren't good at worldbuilding it's a lot easier to notice with a video game than a TV show.

A game also has the crux that if the gameplay sucks and is overly-separated from the story, you loose a lot of the impact. One of the best things I ever saw that nailed the story/gameplay inclusion was in Solarmax: throughout the game, you constantly order units into bloody Lancasterian combat over countless worlds. You build and bleed ships by the thousands, from the Moon to the far ends of the universe. In the last mission, as your fleet defends Earth and dozens of ships sacrifice yourself to bring down the three motherships, you finish the campaign and get a 'good job' screen. And then you get the memorial- to the hundreds of ships and thousands of lives that were in your hands, defending earth from the cataclysmic terror you yourself unleashed three missions ago. It's a great way to drive things home, unlike "RPG Worldbuilding" which is short for "Filler material in case anyone looks at it funny"
 
This is a harder question by far. Considering AH is basically a tag in terms of consistency (that is, almost none) we have to narrow it down a lot. Is Wolfenstein AH? Is Kingdom Come: Deliverance AH? Can Otome games be technically AH with some fast window dressing? We need to corral this question in some before we can start answering it.

True, it is a very broad question. I haven't played Wolfenstein, but from what I've seen, it doesn't become recognizably AH until the 2009 game, and much more so in the most recent games; prior to that it looks like a standard shooter, blended with open world and secret/occult history elements. A cursory study of Kingdom Come says it's more historical fiction than AH, but there may be aspects I missed. Otome, through the same study, seem more like the SIMS and other such games, so I don't really think they're AH.

Ultimately, I believe what constitutes an AH game is where the story revolves around an explicitly altered event (Ex: World In Conflict, Command & Conquer Red Alert), and isn't merely set in a particular period and lets you play it out how you like, with or without historical events occurring when, where and how they did (Ex: the Total War series, Civilization).
 
I have a feeling that for an AH film - specifically a film - to become mainstream, it'd have to actually be a time travel film but where the time travel happens at the beginning and then the protagonists spend the rest of their time living in the changed world. The problem is that the inevitable plot structure is working out how to change it back again, not exploring the new world that results. A good ISOT-based example of this (as opposed to 'come back to the present to find it's different') would be 1980's The Final Countdown.
 
I have a feeling that for an AH film - specifically a film - to become mainstream, it'd have to actually be a time travel film but where the time travel happens at the beginning and then the protagonists spend the rest of their time living in the changed world. The problem is that the inevitable plot structure is working out how to change it back again, not exploring the new world that results. A good ISOT-based example of this (as opposed to 'come back to the present to find it's different') would be 1980's The Final Countdown.

Actually I think I can see a good variation on this. Basically go for something along the lines of 'there's a group of like maybe three-five people, one just keeps finding that things have gone wrong for them and they can't cope and want to go back but someone else is like 'but Grandpa is actually alive in this world. And they never cancelled 'tv show x'. And nuclear disarmament was achieved' and wants to stay. And then you don't do the 'oh by the way the government's running death camps' pull, it really is just a case of what different people want from life'.

Have a whole plot about the disputes between them and so forth, and then sort of tease a 'many worlds' interpretation at the end.
 
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