Okay, now comapre these games to Starcraft and/or fighting games like Guilty Gear/Blazblue.

Actually I have played hundreds of hours of counter strike. Mostly 1.6 but a bit of source as well. It is a very easy shooter to be alright at, but a hard shooter to be incredible at.

Ragebot - I would argue that Brawl is considered by many (who are mediocre at it) to be an easy fighting game, and obviously you think blazblue is a hard one. However, as a self confessed pro at smash bros, I can say that this is not the case, it is again easy to learn, hard to master because of the sheer variety in the games due to level design and items, as well as the inability to button bash. I haven't played blazblue, but the majority of conventional fighting games come under hard to learn easy to master

As for starcraft, you want me to compare a racer, a shooter and a fighter to an rts? No. I shan't. Same genre comparisons only

Since you've played hundreds of hours of CS, you are saying that it's easy to be alright at. Define the meaning of alright as used here. I still feel that you haven't played CS on the level where you're able to diferentiate between alright and incredible. I've played CS for money for 2 years as "progamer", 7 years total. Playing on the highest level (never actually made the absolute "top" of the world, but was part of our national team as well as high level contender on some of the european events) there was still huge difference between the best players and teams and incredible players and teams. If you ever encountered the real pro, you'd have no idea that CS can be played like that. But that's clanwars, years of hard work on aim servers, watching replays, playing maps with transparent walls, teamwork excercise.

I know players that were incredible considering the cs population, but didn't hold a candle to the level where we played, and we couldn't touch the top teams. Beeing alright in CS is a very wide term, it can mean both top player and complete noob, it's just matter of your point of view. From my point of view, you still have no idea what you are talking about.

Everything is easy to learn and hard to master, unless it's incredibly shallow experience. But some games have wider scale of how "hard" they are to master. No matter how you look at it, MarioKart and Brawl are nowhere near close to Gran Turismo and whatever pro fighting game that is used to measure "skill". If it weren't true, those pro tournaments would be in MK and Brawl instead of these other games.

We'll I would certainly get schooled by the majority of people who play for money

And yes, you're right that the majority of games that we play are hard to master to some degree, however I am arguing that many games considered 'easy' are actually harder to master than games considered hard. The fact that you're detailing the amount of training required to master CS just proves my point, because it is one of the games that many people claim is infact easy. Come to think of it, aren't we both saying the same thing?? That CS is a very hard game to master.

And no, the game that gets chosen for pro tournaments has very little to do with difficulty curves. IMO it has more to do with the amount of money put in by the developer/publisher to put their game forward in the eyes of the hardcore crowd. Additionally, the gamer's ego must be taken into account, being a pro gamer at cartoony games is considered less a source of pride than photorealistic games, as an example

Well agree to disagree, I don't think that CS is easy to pick up for new players, there are tons of other shooters which are much easier. With the exception of the Quake series, I don't think there is harder shooter to start in than CS.

Games that gets chosen for pro tournaments have a lot to do with depth and dif. curves actually, the most famous progaming games are and allways were Counter Strike (original) and Starcraft. They are both miles from photorealistic, in fact, they are cartoony (SC definately is, the same W3, which is current n1 progaming RTS). Also Counter Strike is fan made mod for Half Life, which had 0 backing up. There are also games which get into progaming thanks to the bucks behind them, as happend with Halo 3 or World of Warcraft. But gamer's ego has a little to do with it, WoW is as cartoony as you can get, the PVP is broken beyond belief and since WotkL dumbed down, yet it's one of today's most popular games.

Deciding factors for becoming a progaming game are in no order: a) Popularity b) Depth (="Hard to Master") c) Sponsor interest (= attractiveness). The best games have it all. I don't think that there is anything preventing Mario Kart to become a progaming game, with the exception of "Depth". It's very popular and it's attractive to watch, may seem kiddie, but that wasn't problem before.

There are games easy to learn but difficult to master that's true...but I don't agree with those exaples. Yes CS in my opinion is more difficult than UT (it's also a totally different type of FPS, not so easy to compare) but it's not like UT is easy to master, even after you have learnd the basics there's still a room for improvement (I'm talking about the first UT). Also I don't see how GT or Forza can be described as easy to master.

Mario kart is considered easyer because, if you take a noob, it's more probable for him to win a single race even if, in a tornament, the best player is always the one who wins while in GT or UT a noob would not stand a chance skilled players, even in a single race/deathmatch but In my opinion the same could be said for Melee and Brawl.

super smash bros melee was hardcore, cant say the same about brawl because its too slow for me ~~

I'm not very experienced in neither Mario Kart or Gran Turismo, but to me it seems like you're forgetting that GT as standard plays with a lot of mechanisms for helping the player turned on (traction control, automatic gearchange, etc.). Pro players won't be playing with those turned on, and the tournaments that are held are without those as well.

haha, the same could be said for brawl, but it would be incorrect. I consider myself pretty good, I came 2nd in my colleges tourny. I can reliably beat noobs without attacking. Using only shield, roll, jump (including killing people by jumping off their heads), walk and run, a good player can slaughter a noob on almost all of the levels - just roll 'round until they fall off. If you think Smash Bros is the kind of game where a noob stands a chaqnce against a pro, you have only ever seen noobs play it.

You misundrestood me....in melee and brawl (expecially in melee) a noob does NOT stand a chance a against a pro, just like it happens on UT and GT, does that make smash bros (and GT/UT) an harder game to begin with but easier to master? I don't think so.