To me casual actually sounds worse than easy. Casual, hardcore and similar also make it sound like the game systems in these difficulty levels are different. To me casual is not about the difficulty, it's about not being bogged down by overcomplicated rules and such. So a casual difficulty might offer an easy way to respec for example, whereas easy difficulty might not, because "easy" is simply the same game, but easier. "Casual games" for example might include some brain-bendingly difficult puzzle games and such. I'm probably in the minority here, though...
But then calling them "easy" and "hard" has always been silly, because often the "hard" is not hard at all, and sometimes the "easy" is too hard.
Maybe they should just call them "in your favour", "neutral" and "in your disfavour", or "easiest", "second easiest" and so on.
