Actually there are more levels than just casual and hardcore. I personally don't like the terms either, but really, there's more to it. It goes like this, from Wikipedia (though minimally edited by me):
Casual gamer: A casual gamer is a player whose time or interest in playing games is limited. Casual gamers tend to play games designed for ease of game play and don't spend much time playing more involved games. The genres that casual gamers play vary, and they might not own a specific video game console to play their games. Casual gaming demographics vary greatly from those of traditional video games, as the typical casual gamer is older and more predominantly female. One casual gamer subset is the "fitness gamer", which plays motion-based exercise games.
The term casual gamer can also be used to distinguish between play styles of level-based character advance in nonlinear games with respect to the amount of dedicated hours of play. MMORPGs may require many hours of grinding to develop a character to maximum level and reach the endgame. Other games like Eve Online and The Lord of the Rings Online try to balance leveling so that casual gamers can play along with those dedicating more hours to the game.
Mid-core gamer: A core or mid-core gamer is a player with a wide range of interests and enthusiast toward creative and diverse games, but without the amount of time spent and sense of competition of a hardcore gamer. The mid-core gamer enjoys complex games but won't buy every novel release, doesn't have time for long games, and is a target consumer that needs features not found in games for the other types. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that they designed the Wii U to cater to a core gamer who is between the casual and hard-core categories.
Hardcore gamer: Hardcore gamers prefer to take significant time and practice on games, and tend to play more involved games that require larger amounts of time to complete or master. Hardcore gamers may take part in video game culture such as competitions, events and conventions. Competitions are another defining characteristic of hardcore gamers, who often compete in organized tournaments, leagues, or ranked play integrated into the game proper, an example of this is Major League Gaming, an Electronic sports organization that often holds events for hardcore First-person shooter games such as Quake. There are many subtypes of hardcore gamers based on the style of game, game play preference, hardware platform, and other preferences.
Pro-gamer: Professional gamers play video games for money. Whether a professional gamer is a subtype of the hardcore gamer largely depends on the degree to which a professional gamer is financially dependent upon the income derived from gaming. So far as a professional gamer is financially dependent upon gaming, the time spent playing is no longer "leisure" time. In countries of Asia, particularly South Korea and Japan, professional gamers are sponsored by large companies and can earn more than $100,000USD a year, in addition to the following that some obtain. In the United States, Major League Gaming has contracted Electronic Sports Gamers with $250,000USD yearly deals.
Also, many programmers are earning significant amounts of money testing these games for the various companies who are more than happy to pay for this service. Once the tester is done reviewing the game they usually get to keep the game. Allowing the testers to keep the game is no small thing as most new video games for consoles like Xbox 360 are priced at $59.99.
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Anyways, that's as far as I need to go with that, there are more, but those are less relevant, even the pro-gamer one is somewhat irrelevant, but I still added it. Anyways, the thing to come away with is that you're missing the mid-core gamer choice.
This is hardcore
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