DragonDai said:
The first is that it is NOT okay to dock a game's Metacritic score because you personally have a moral or societal concern with a video game.
This statement is ridiculous by its very nature.
One, there's a reason that we have multiple critics out there, rather than just a single official critic that gives everything a single official score. It's because we want multiple viewpoints.
When you're looking to judge works of media, you want to read multiple reviews, look at the points they raise, determine which of those points are relevant
to you, and decide accordingly. Long-term, you can find reviewers you generally agree with and take their opinions as stronger than others, although you should still never rely on a single reviewer (who knows, they might have just been having a really good/bad day).
Two, similarly, there's a reason that Metacritic is an aggregate of multiple reviews. It attempts to quickly gauge the overall objective quality of a game by combining multiple subjective reviews. A single bad review isn't going to have a huge impact on the Metacritic score, so long as it's a major game with a lot of reviews.
Plus, subject matter
matters. If I have two games, both with the exact same game mechanics, exact same technical specs and performance, etc etc., and one of them is a typical shooter while the other one is Baby Murder Simulator 2014, you know what? Yeah, I expect the latter to get some lower scores. Some reviewers found it objectionable. Some people
playing it will find it objectionable. Therefore, you could say it's an objectively worse game by virtue of the fact that fewer people can enjoy it. If you're looking for a sure-fire gift, pick the first game; if it's for yourself, then just make your own damn decision.
Three, on the subject of Metacritic scores as determining how much money devs make and whatnot: So what? This is the fault of the publishers who make these stupid decisions. Letting this affect review scores amounts to blackmail. There are other, far more useful and important stats you could be basing bonuses on; you know, like, how many copies a game sells? And keep in mind that a huge number of people still buy games without reading a single review, just based on brand names and marketing (which is how Aliens: Colonial Marines sold over 1.31 million copies).