It does look, however, alarmingly similar to metabolic prejudice. It is not clear to me how the vegetarian could satisfactorily answer this question. But, if I allow that she might, then although it would make it morally permissible for her to play video games, it would not, to focus on another aspect of the original question, make it morally permissible to treat robotic creatures any differently from animals. If it is only their failure to share our environment that makes video agents non-creatures, then robotic cognitive agents, who clearly do share our environment, must be counted as fully fledged creatures. A second non-metabolic difference concerns the history of an entity.
Animals are the product of millions of years of evolutionary refinement.
Once again, it is hard to see how such a view could amount to much more than prejudice. Moreover, it seems to suggest that the moral command that animals have upon us is akin to, say, the demands that our heritage makes on us to be documented, considered, preserved, and so forth. Perhaps the two cases are alike. If this is so, it is seldom acknowledged by the vegetarian. However, even if were to accept this view, some artificially evolved agents do have a history of natural selection.