One of the first important things you study in language theory is that language is universally arbitrary. This means that the true, correct meaning of a word isn’t “out there.” You don’t find it out. You decide it, instead.

Of course this is only true as far as you also understand that modern languages are very well “synchronically codified”, there are vocabularies after all. But historically language is always in flux, always changing and adapting. Its rule isn’t about being “truthful”, but being useful (cue Wallace’s “The Broom of the System” and its many wordplays). Simply put, language is an agreement among a group of people. There is no fundamental correctness about the meaning or usage of a word, just what seems more useful and appropriate for the time, and reaching enough people agreeing on some common ground.

All this to say that what I’m going to do here is kind of pointless. I can PROVE that the use of “Quality of Life” is wrong, but as long I’m in the minority trying being pedantic about correctness, the other party will win (has already won). Yet, the current trend of the misuse of the word has pragmatic consequences: it’s blurring the meaning so much that the word itself is now misleading and pointless in practice. I’m not arguing about correctness, but that the continued misuse is having consequences that are pragmatically bad, based on instincts that are wrong.

“Quality of Life” is generally used, in game design, to define some system that has been simplified or streamlined, because, intuitively, it improves directly the quality of the experience. But while chasing this bland and widespread use, we’re actually losing the usefulness of the term. Because “QoL” in its true meaning isn’t vague at all, and can be defined very specifically.

“QoL” defines specifically those changes that DO NOT DIRECTLY AFFECT GAMEPLAY. That’s the proper definition. If it touches gameplay then it can’t be “QoL”, it’s instead a fundamental rule change that has to be consciously driven. Because, and here we come to the center of the argument, the usefulness of the concept lies in defining changes that are UNIVERSALLY positive. No one comes in and argues that some “QoL” change was “wrong.” It’s beyond question. You can improve QoL, but you cannot argue any before/after. It’s an useful concept because it defines those subset of changes that are always positive without any need for scrutiny.

So, for example, if a game requires some frequent command, that happens to be several menus deep, and then it gets changed so that there’s a shortcut to it, immediately available, THAT’S QoL! Because no one is going to say that the previous method of going through several menus to get to that option was “better.” And this because to qualify as QoL it has to have no impact on actual gameplay.

Yet, in many games the use of UI is itself “gameplay.” So, say in Monster Hunter, there’s a specific combos that is built out of a sequence of commands, and you decide instead to trigger it, and streamline it, to the press of a single button triggering the whole thing… that’s NOT QoL. Because it directly affects gameplay. It is not QoL, SPECIFICALLY, because someone can argue that this isn’t an objective improvement, but may streamline and simplify the game too much, fundamentally changing the gameplay. Being not-QoL means it defines an area of game design that has to be consciously driven. Chosen. You make choices in game design, choices themselves driven by motivations. Being overall a system so complex that it cannot be simply mathematically solved, making it a form of art.

The usefulness of “Quality of Life” was in separating the ART of game design, and so the conscious, deliberate choices, from what was instead quality of life in the sense that no one would ever argue for WORSE quality of their own life. The INTUITIVE term itself was intended to define that specific line of distinction.

That we lost. Because everything now is Quality of Life, precisely when Life’s quality is becoming utter shit.