It’s also a way of being misogynist without being explicit about it. In gaming especially, “casual” and “hardcore” are nearly always defined along gender lines, with games that women prefer and/or that are targeted towards women being branded “casual” no matter how complex they are, and games that men prefer and/or that are targeted towards men being branded “hardcore” no matter how simple they are. (And sometimes, when men discover the depth in a “casual” game, it suddenly becomes “hardcore” and thus the player communities become male-dominated.)

I can’t seem to find it now, but there was a post (in fact, I’m sure there have been several) about how the exact same phenomenon happens in literature.