Red Dead Redemption 2: Emotional essay by 75-year-old woman goes viral

She describes the hit Rockstar game as a ‘work of art’

An essay about Red Dead Redemption 2 written by 75-year-old playwright, author and educator Jessica Hoffmann Davis has gone viral on Reddit.

Davis is also the mother of Benjamin Byron Davis, the actor who voiced charismatic gang leader Dutch van der Linde in the best-selling Western game.

In the 2,800-word essay, titled “Unsung heroes: Reconceptualizing a video game as a work of art”, she describes how she bought a PS4 in order to appreciate her son’s work.

“The only way I would get to experience my son’s celebrated performance was to learn to play Red Dead Redemption 2,” she writes.

Davis talks through the time she spent learning the controls, and the ways in which the game moved her: the game’s final scenes, she writes, brought her to tears.

The essay also recounts the unusual experience of attending a comic convention as a septuagenarian woman.

Her son shared the essay on Reddit, where it soon attracted the attention of the Red Dead Redemption online fanbase.

The post has been upvoted by more than 17,000 people, and serves as a touching reminder that video games are capable of appealing to all kinds of people – and it’s never too late to learn.