GAME PLAY

If one looks at LOST purely as a video game, what would be the purpose and game play?

It would seem the characters would be avatars in an open world MMO.

It would also seem that the goal of the game could be a variation of "Follow the Leader."

And the game ended only after Jack became the Leader and when he ran out of life force and died.

So, even in that situation, what was the reward or level-up?  The end church could represent Jack's true followers. And when Christian opens the doorway, this could mean they all were going to the level game level as a team.  All the characters came to the island as individuals. The situations made it impossible to stay unattached or alone for very long. One had to make pacts, deals, friendships in order to stay in groups. There is power in numbers. There is strength in numbers.

The missions were all convoluted in logic, but they did serve the purpose of gaining leadership points and followers.

And what leadership role was everyone fighting for? Jacob's island guardianship seems to be the top prize. Jacob had a huge following of Others on the island and in the Temple. But MIB destroyed much of that following leaving only a hand full of beach survivors as candidates. When Jack accepted the island leadership role from Jacob, he still had to defeat MIB who was on the verge of completing its own coup. When Jack defeated MIB (with the help of Kate), that ended his quest. Jack won the game.

The game would then have been played from Jack's point of view. This was Jack's game journey that the viewers rode along, shotgun. It was Jack's struggles to be leader, to make life and death decisions, to make deals, break his word, lead missions, make mistakes, and then finally get enough followers to trust him fully that they would all be rewarded in the end.

This is probably one of the weaker theories in the LOST universe. Who would want to merely observe another person playing a video game? But in one sense, with so many people identifying and rooting for specific characters, viewers did have a vicarious in game action with their favorite characters.