THE BIG GAME

The Super Bowl ended on a controversial play. The Seahawks were ripped for throwing a slant pass at the one yard line. The Patriots rookie defensive back made a stellar play by reading it, reacting, and intercepting the pass to see New England's victory.

Once a person knows the rules of a game, then that person can create a strategy on how to win the game. One needs a strategy in order to coordinate his moves toward the path of victory.

But if one believes LOST was really a game engine where the main characters were pawns in some elaborate contest, does that hold up to scrutiny like the last Super Bowl play?

There are several possibilities of the game theory of LOST.

First, that LOST was merely the representation of a massive on-line first person adventure game. As such, the characters were not real but avatars on a computer screen. Each character would have had a real live person controlling their movements and actions (which we could assume mirror the players).  The nice aspect of this theory is that the series characters were constantly playing games, some outright and some coy manipulations. There were elements of extreme first person shooter violence. There were some adventure-danger elements like attacks and kidnaps. There were torturous means of finding information to lead characters on quests for answers. The initial premise was that the castaways wanted to find a means of rescue. And like a linear platformer, they had to move along on missions to find the means to get off the island (such as finding the radio tower, or the Hatch).

Second, that LOST was some sort of Westworld live-action danger theme park. In the movie, the mechanical robots go haywire, putting the guests in real danger. Likewise, the island could be considered a theme park that pits various "teams" against each other for the "control" of the island. It is like capture-the-flag with live ammo.

Third, that LOST was really a supernatural game of chess or Senet played by immortals Jacob and MIB. In Greek mythology, the gods would look down upon human beings as inferior play things. The gods would mess with their lives at will. By substituting real human beings for chess pieces, and manipulating their own "free" will into action, Jacob and MIB could have a formed an amusing but cruel chess match filled with chaotic outcomes.  And this could be the reason why Jacob continually brought more humans to their island to play game after game with MIB, who certainly was bored up to the point that the 815ers arrived on the island. A supernatural chess match makes the main characters human, alive but in a different level of existence which looks real, has real outcomes including death.

One of the supposed tenets of the show was that the island "had rules." Widmore and Ben claimed to each other that there was a rule violation (such as the killing of Alex by Widmore). However, technically the non-killing of family members did not apply to Alex, since Ben was not her real father. So when Ben was going to go after Penny, Widmore's daughter, it would have been Ben who was breaking the rules.

But we would later learn that the rules were whatever the island guardian decided them to be. So the rules were no rules. The only clear rule was that Crazy Mother decreed that Jacob and his brother could never kill each other. It was one god scolding and casting a spell on two lesser gods. But what happened? Jacob's brother killed Crazy Mother, and Jacob in turn set off the events to kill his own brother. So that rule was broken. Both Crazy Mother and brother were buried in the caves, with the smoke monster assuming the form of MIB to haunt Jacob for an eternity.

The game theory would work if there was an actual end game. One could still assume that the end game was rescue or leaving the island. Those few people who got on the Ajira plane may have been "the winners" of the game, but really what did they win? A future life of pain in the real world? If the ability to leave the island was a player's victory, then why did the O6 return to the island? Did they get a second life, a second chance to "level up" in strength and importance? No, Jack and Kate were subservient to Sawyer in the Others camp. Sayid was merely a shell crazy man. Sun was lost in another time.

And this is a basic problem with the plot of the show. There was no clear path to a defined conclusion of the island action. The sideways world resolution confused everyone because it marked "death" for every character as the "reward."  When is death the best option for a game player?