To me, if hardcore has any meaning related to gaming it equals one of two uses I've been using and seen used for decades:
A.) A game that is very, very difficult. Such that most users will not finish it or even come close to finishing it. And by extention any gamer who plays, enjoys, and does well at those games.
The toughest scrolling shoot em ups have often fallen into this category.
B.) A game that has a very large learning curve, making it in the main unapproachable at first, and thus often being labeled as part of a niche genre. And by extention any gamer who plays, enjoys and does well at those games.
Flight Sims that attempt realistic flight models, some Tactical Role-Playing Games, and heavy stat focused Dungeon Crawlers would be examples.
Casual is a term that was used far, far, far less often prior to this generation. I suppose if I can recall it being used it all, it was vaguely attached to card and board games, and the kinds of software that often came pre-installed on Windows in the Games section of the start menu when you bought a new PC, or those 100-in-1 style game packs that were available in the PC section at the store.
Since Tetris for instance, or a variation of it was often included in these suites, it would be logical to assume Tetris was casual, but when separated it would not have been referred to that way. Casual instead reflected how the game was being used more than the game itself. If you used it, like many people do, to kill a few minutes at work, it was a casual activity. If you actually regarded it as a video game you were going to sit down, play, and attempt to master, it wasn't, it wasn't hardcore as that was a reserved term, it simply was a video game.
It most definitely did not refer more broadly to games with a family friendly themes and simple mechanics, or games like Burger Time (NES) and Root Beer Tapper (ARC) would have been labeled casual, and I never heard anyone refer to them that way.
The way we use it today is strictly the result of marketing and people latching on to a brand because they wish to be "Hardcore," the ones that don't pay enough attention to the industry marketers and game journalism gatekeepers, or simply don't care, are labeled "Casual." Ironically, I think Nintendo gave this the biggest boost when they went out of their way to insist the Wii would serve both audiences, showing silly videos of "cool" kids jumping behind their couch while pretending to play FPS games, insisting that such people were the "core" audience.
Any gamer can potentially enjoy any game. Any gamer that dismisses a game based upon what appears to be family friendly themes within its content, is engaged in judging a book by its cover, and is subject to all the same labels of "narrow-mindedness" usually ascribed to that activity. That said, we're all narrow-minded some of the time (I actually believe we're all narrow-minded most of the time, but people often don't take kindly to that suggestion), and it should come as no surprise that many people are drawn to certain kinds of games based on nearly countless cultural factors.
Yes... Yes it is. Every human does it.
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