The game then simply rolls with what it is given from there.
Paradox games like Victoria 2 and Hearts of Iron IV already are historical sandbox simulations in and of themselves you start off in a historically accurate time period and the actions of the player have the potential to change the course of history. The best place to find these types of games, in my opinion, is the Paradox Interactive modding community. Instead of hand-waving away criticism as irrelevant to the player’s enjoyment of the alternative world, the developers of these games engage with primary source material as well as their often academically interested audience to create a consensus on what could happen if world history had taken a different turn than it did in real life. In these games the alternative history scenario functions like an argument about how certain historical processes could have developed based on real-world history similar to it. While a number of alternative history settings in mainstream video games such as Wolfenstein or the Bioshock series typically make little or no attempt to justify the plausibility of their scenario, there is a subset of games that are willing to effectively place themselves in a semi-academic debate.
