Do other games (or simulations) demonstrate similar ideas, or are cellular automata a rare case?
What makes Conway's Life particularly "catchy" (along with other 2D CAs) seems to be the motion. Humans love watching stuff move, especially when the motion is partly predictable and partly surprising -- i.e., like a screen-saver, not like TV static. And they like watching things blow up. A lot of Lifenthusiasts probably got their start by aiming gliders at carefully balanced Life patterns and gleefully watching the resulting explosions... it's a lot more fun than actually blowing things up, because you can always hit Undo and run it all over again, no harm done!
I would really have appreciated an "Undo" button for rewinding entropy and running those things over again, especially when they went disappointingly wrong halfway through...!