You make a good point, so I'm going to try to refine mine. You're right that a small minority of readers and gamers actually follow criticism compared to reviews. I think the influence of criticism on authors is much much larger than the influence of criticism on game designers, though.

It has to do with the way we train people to write books as opposed to how we train people to make video games. English degree programs often spend as much time on literary theory as they do on the practical aspects of composition. Most CS and video game design programs are almost entirely practical. I think this has allowed literature to move alongside and even in front of the culture at large while video games lag the rest of the culture.

Maybe this explains why we've gotten used to plenty of topics and themes in books that are still stunning in video games. Think about how shocking it was to some people that we could play a gay character in Fable or Bully. Nobody even notices when a best seller has a gay protagonist.