A casual game is a game everyone plays in my opinion. Also, "party" game.

A title no one really plays is hardcore, rawr!!!

for me, it means PES , Tekken and any game I play with my friends when we get together.

Casual games = Games that I can play with my family and friends.

I love them.

I see casual games as any game that never ever atempts to challenge the player, even slightly regardless of presentation theme, story, whatever ever most ppl use to distinquish casual games with nowadays.

I have more fun playing the games mentioned above than the  "hardcore" ones, it probably has something to do with "sharing".

To me, "casual games" are the same as "pop music". They are the most debased creation imaginable within the confines of the artform, but they are inexplicably wildly popular.

This is the main reason that I'm not really bothered by the fact that the Wii is outselling clearly superior consoles. Miley Cyrus outsells Animal Collective, but no one takes this to mean that Miley Cyrus is the better artist. The same applies, in my view, to the fact that Wii Fit outsells Demon's Souls.

I really don't understand the definition of casual games that would have it that they are any game that can be played with family and friends. Champions of Norrath and Tekken are not casual games, but they are games that you can play with your family and friends.

I don't use the term myself (in my little world, I have core games and non-core games), but I assume people are talking about shallow carnival games, mini games compilations and the like when I see the term used on the web. It depends on the context though.

I think it is really hard to define what constitutes as a casual game. I was talking to my friend about Kinect and how I was disapointed that it's launch line-up is very casual. He quickly pointed at Dance Central as a hardcore game, and I disagreed. I asked questions like: Is Dance Dance Revolution not casual? Guitar Hero? Rockband?

While in general I still maintain those as casual games (in general), I realized it really comes down to what the gamer makes of it. You can go all out in Rockband and try to get perfect on every song on the hardest difficulty, that is pretty damn hardcore, not casual at all. I think the same can be applied to many other games.

Casual or hardcore, it all depends on how the gamer plays the game.

I think of games that I only play for about an hour with family and friends and then they sit until the next event. They also must be easy so that people who rarely play can quickly pick them up. I am in no way saying its coop games as I am continually baffled as grown men and women can't figure out how to control the analog sticks for a badass coop shooter. Looking at my games collection, under the above definition the only casual games I have are all on my Wii. In fact, with the few games I have played for my Wii the only one that is not really easy to pick up and play for a short time is Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Casual games to me mean games that have a relaxing mood that allows fun and happiness for everyone. It's not the game itself, but the enviornment that it causes on the outside, or "real world."

For example, Metroid Prime series is considered hardcore, but in my terms it can be a casual if I'm just playing with my friends having fun and laughing, not caring about the outcome.

On the other hand, Mario Party 8 was hardcore when my friends and I were very serious about what was happening in the game, making sure we completed 100% of the objectives and often ending the game with someone in tears and others in anger or frusteration.

So any game can be "casual" or "hardcore" because it's the mood of the gaame, not the game itself.