Then you’ll be pleased to know that some crazy people worked to build an entire computer architecture using metapixels just to play Tetris: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/142673

I’ve got to imagine there’s some sort of GoL compiler that takes more writable code and compiles it to a board state, given we know about a whole set of machines that do specific things (gates and whatnot)

Not too different in concept to automated IC layout from Verilog or VHDL.

There is a rather roundabout route to compiling software to game of life cells that is pretty interesting. It is of course completely impractical but the idea that it could be done is intriguing.