NYU Psych professor Gary Marcus seems to think so, at least. In a lengthy article at the Huffington Post, he first completely dismisses the whole idea of a music game (“Few games demand less of the player; I suspect monkeys could be trained to play, and know for a fact that robots can cruise through Guitar Hero on Expert”) then attempts to address the question of what makes people enjoy them anyway. His answer?

As Harvard psychologist Dan Wegner has argued in The Illusion of Conscious Will, Oujia boards were designed to trick people into thinking they didn’t have control when they really did. Guitar Hero is designed to do the opposite. … [T]he real secret to the game is [the fact that] if you miss the button, you don’t hear the note. The brain whirs away, and notices the contingency. When I push the button, I hear Keith Richards; when I fail to push the button (or press the wrong button, or press it late), I don’t hear Keith Richards. Therefore, I am Keith Richards!

Have a look at the whole article for even more hilarity.

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