A casual player seems like someone who'll play every once in a while, mainly in high sec but goes into lower systems for the thrill.

As for hardcore, i can't explain it without it becoming about people who grind all day, every day

That would be 40 hours a week which would make it the same as a full-time job. Sorry, but there's no way that's casual. I'm surprised that you haven't hit the cap yet, I only play 1-2 hours a day and I was approaching the cap by the end of the first week of the new build. I've never hit 0 but 1000 SP for killing 10 people sounds pretty close to the cap.

It's not about how many hours someone plays. There are people that play Bejewelled or Angry Birds for hours every day. That doesn't mean they're not still casual.

It's more about the amount of depth and complexity someone wants from a game I think.

I would personally put the divider somewhere around the 5-7 hours a week mark. I play around 4 or 5 hours a week and would consider myself right close to the edge of being a "hardcore" player.

Pretty much.

Casual: "Weekend Warrior" - 8 to 24 hour a week gamer (typically on their weekend, when they don't have anything better to do).
Casual: "The Hobbyist" - 4 to 12 hour a week gamer.
Casual: "The Occasional" - ??? hours a week (Dust 514? Yeah I'm in that beta. No, I haven't played any matches yet this week.)

Hardcore: "The College Student" - 20 to 30 hour a week gamer (whenver they can fit it in and they don't have anything better to do)
Hardcore: "The Professional" - 40 hours a week gamer.
Hardcore: "The No Lifer" - 80 hours a week gamer

Casual<>Hardcore<>No Lifer

I think you have an extremely unrealistic idea of what the average casual gamer invests in gaming.

To me, a casual player is the guy who plays a few hours of games a week. Maybe Saturday afternoon he flips on his PS3 and kills an hour or two casually burning some time on whatever game he feels like messing around on.

A "hardcore" gamer, is someone who invests free time to try and achieve specific results in specific games. For a hardcore gamer, the gaming is an actual hobby rather than simply a time waster. A hardcore gamer is usually actively playing multiple games. So even if they are spending 3 hours or more every night gaming, it's unlikely they're gonna rack up all of that time on a single game.

I personally probably spend 10-20 hours per week gaming. Ask any casual or non-gamer if that's "hardcore" and I'd wager they will answer in the affirmative.

What YOU are, is closer to a "no lifer", which is basically someone who devotes as much time to a single game as many people devote to an actual job. 20+ hours a week, every week, on a single game is well beyond your run of the mill hardcore gamer, especially assuming you don't just play Dust 514.