People have been trying to write good games based on Conway's Life for decades, but it seems as if most game mechanisms end up having too steep a learning curve -- mostly because the system is too sensitive, so one bit out of place tends to cause huge, unpredictable, uncontrollable effects.

Seems to me Life has a lot of potential as abstract art, though. I'm almost curious enough about what they're doing in Second Life these days, to sign up and go have a look:

http://www.conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068#p2...