Virtual Edgework

Abstract

This article examines how table-top role-playing fantasy gamers engage in edgework. Edgework, as defined by Stephen Lyng, occurs when people voluntarily tread boundaries to gain emotional rewards. Based on nineteen months of participant-observation in a gaming group, twenty in-depth interviews, and archival data from e-mail lists and websites, I show how gamers gained many of the benefits that traditional edgeworkers, like extreme sports participants, obtain without the physical danger. Participants tread the boundaries of sanity/insanity and order/disorder, prepared for their edgework, and sustained an illusion of control. By playing a game, they felt alive and powerful, yet removed the edge, thus engaging in “virtual edgework.” In contrast to previous studies, I show that what makes an activity edgework is not the type of risk but how the experience is structured. I suggest that future scholars need to consider new avenues for edgework as people’s lives move online.