One of my favourite things about Out Of The Game, the biweekly podcast that I record with three other former journalists and one current journo, is when a seemingly ordinary discussion of a recently released game veers into topics that are more provocative. Take the September releases of The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 along with the August release of the movie Inglorious Basterds, for instance. At first blush, a film like Inglorious Basterds would seem to have much more in common with a game like The Saboteur than with The Beatles: Rock Band or Guitar Hero 5. After all, both Quentin Tarantino’s flick and EA/Pandemic’s title are set in Nazi-occupied France, whereas the Beatles game takes place during their ’60s heyday and Guitar Hero 5 is the interactive equivalent of a rock compilation album. But the World War II thriller and the pair of rhythm games got me thinking about history, and more specifically, whether the artists involved have any special obligation or responsibility in the face of the historical record?

Here’s what I mean: when I first got wind of The Beatles: Rock Band, I was excited about the possibility of adding their music to the library of Rock Band songs on my hard drive… until I found out that Harmonix would be erecting a virtual wall between the Beatles songs and all of the other tracks that had been released for Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and the various track packs and downloadable songs. It’s not as though this was completely unexpected; after all, the surviving Beatles and the representatives of the deceased members’ estates are known to be very protective of their legacy, and understandably so. Yet the fact that the on-disc release of the AC/DC Live Rock Band track pack included a download code to allow players to export those songs for play in Rock Band 2 allowed me to hope that Harmonix might similarly prevail upon the Beatles to see that the rules of the road are different in games, and that they should play ball. No such luck: even the Beatles DLC albums are only playable with The Beatles: Rock Band.

Then I saw the much-discussed YouTube footage of deceased Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s Guitar Hero 5 avatar doing his best Flavor Flav and Jon Bon Jovi impressions. As a result, I started to wonder whether the Beatles’ representatives and Harmonix hadn’t had the right idea after all. There was something disturbing about seeing a reasonably well-done facsimile of the angsty grunge rocker, wearing one of Cobain’s iconic sweaters and singing songs like Bring The Noise 20XX and You Give Love A Bad Name.

Now, it’s quite understandable how we got from there to here. What began as fictional rockers singing a variety of covers on PlayStation 2 evolved into fictional rockers singing a variety of master recordings on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (with improved visual fidelity to boot). It’s not as though we gamers haven’t made allowances for the malleability of the medium before; if it makes no difference that a fictional female avatar is singing male vocals and vice versa, why should it matter that a Kurt Cobain avatar sings Ring Of Fire or a Johnny Cash avatar sings Smells Like Teen Spirit? But it does matter to some, and sometimes artists have to stumble on to a cultural landmine and detonate it so that the rest of us can learn that it’s there and act accordingly. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

At the same time, what do we lose if we hem our culture in because of these concerns surrounding an artist’s obligation to the historical record? Think of the Kanye West internet meme that sprung up after he rushed the stage during country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Music Video Awards, or the Xzibit meme from his MTV car customisation show, Pimp My Ride. Think of Danger Mouse’s 2004 recording The Grey Album, which put Jay-Z a capellas from The Black Album over remixed tracks from the Beatles’ The White Album. Closer to the medium we love, I know of one major developer-publisher that years ago was developing a satirical action game featuring a slew of world leaders as playable characters… only to have it cancelled when higher-ups got wind of it.

What’s more, it’s not as if those who’ve pledged more fidelity to the historical record have taken an oath to tell the whole truth; the Beatles game may include studio banter between the lads from Liverpool, but the tensions among the group’s members and other, potentially more spiky, edges to the true story are omitted and ignored. There’s no one answer here, no hard and fast way to tell right from wrong. The only thing developers and publishers can do is recognise that as their products become more popular and their visuals more true to life, these and other thorny issues will only become more prevalent. That’s what history tells us, anyway.

N’Gai Croal is a writer and videogame design consultant. You can follow him online at ncroal.tumblr.com.