"You Shoot Like a Girl!": The Female Protagonist in Action-Adventure Video Games

This study examines how female protagonists are constructed in action-adventure video games, using a content analysis of three 2002 titles: Metroid Prime, Resident Evil, and Eternal Darkness. Its central argument is that these heroines occupy primary avatar roles that nominally challenge traditional gender norms, yet their heroism is repeatedly qualified. Jill Valentine is cast as a victim, a damsel, and a target of abuse, while Alex in Eternal Darkness remains largely passive until the final battle. Across the analysis, female protagonists emerge as exceptions within male-dominated genres whose agency is undercut by dependence on male characters and by conformity to traditional gender roles.

The analysis finds that Samus Aran, from Metroid, is the most gender-neutral and emotionally unmarked of the three figures, largely avoiding the victimization and beauty conventions that shape Jill and Alex. Her armored suit sidesteps the Western beauty ideals that the other two heroines embody to varying degrees, with Jill's physique judged the least plausible for her occupation. Across the sample, the emerging "ideal" action heroine is thin, Caucasian, and toned, with masculine-coded professions and violent behavior, and sexualization varies with visual and narrative factors.

The study's conclusions are deliberately cautious. Film theory on audience identification proves inadequate for interactive games, so claims about how players identify with their avatars remain unresolved, particularly for Samus. The small sample of three games, the absence of audience research, and the conflation of beauty ideals with sexualization all limit the reliability of its findings. The author therefore calls for larger, more diverse studies that include male protagonists as comparison points and that examine how players actually interpret these characters.