Having recently dropped out of college to be an esports athlete, 24-year-old Simon–also known by his in-game name, Pan–moves from city to city with his teammates to compete nationally in fantasy role-playing game, Darkmore Heroes. He keeps in close contact with his austere professor-mentor, Dr. Burke, as he levels up his gaming skills, navigates the pressures of sponsored esports life, and searches for love between panic attacks from overwork. It isn’t until Pan meets his opponents at a tournament in Chicago that he discovers the unexpected turns that love and sexuality can take. After a reckoning with his father—a devout evangelical bent on ‘saving’ his family—Pan makes some life changes after a vicious attack, learning to lean on friends and lovers. This queer coming-of-age novel follows Pan through the banalities, liaisons, ecstasies, traumas, and violence that life presents him. His world opens up his own queer existence as he navigates a world made over as a game with hidden rules, complex decisions, and playful movements. Above all, Pan honors the search within himself to discover what, at bottom, makes life worth living. Simultaneously packed with action and a tour de force of cultural theory, Rogue Burnout prompts readers to reconsider the high cost of an administered life of labor.