It’s a question many people are asking these days — why aren’t female heroes getting more recognition lately But rather than simply asking, 12-year old Madeline Messer actually decided to put her research to good use — and it’s certainly paid off in more ways than she could expect.

The Washington Post initially posted Messer’s story back in March, where her parents allowed her to download the top 50 apps in the Endless Runner category, as part of research to see how many female characters were available to play in the games, without the need to pay for them. Her research pulled up some interesting numbers, as noted in the hand-written chart below.

The notes are hard to read, but the breakdown is that only 18 percent of the games had characters with unidentifiable genders, and 98 percent offered bod characters. Meanwhile, only 46 percent of the apps had girl characters to offer at all. Furthermore, 90 percent of the apps offered the boy characters for free, while only 15 percent offered girl characters for no cost. That’s a staggering set of numbers, especially considering that the popular Temple Run, downloaded more than a billion times, has a general audience of 60 percent females.

When the apps do offer girl characters, Messer found that players are charged an average of $7.53, a larger price than the $.26 average the apps cost to begin with. Temple Run Oz in particular is the worst culprit, charging $29.97 for the only female character in the game.

“These biases affect young girls like me,” said Messer. “The lack of girl characters implies that girls are not equal to boys and they don’t deserve characters that look like them. I am a girl; I prefer being a girl in these games. I do not want to pay to be a girl.”

But not all mobile companies are that way. The Hunger Games lets you choose between a male and female character from the start, and other games follow that tradition as well. And Golden Monkey Media has even gone as far as to make Messer a prominent part of its latest mobile release, Noodles Now.

Sean Henry, founder of the company, asked if Messer wanted to be a character in his game, complete with a designed avatar based on her likeness and full voiceover. She jumped on the opportunity, and expressed joy playing as a female character.

“It’s so fun playing as ‘me’ in Noodles Now,” she said. “It’s really cool to be delivering noodles on a flying scooter.”

Sean added, “It was a real pleasure to get Maddie’s character into our game. She’s a terrific role model for young people everywhere.”

Noodles Now is available on iOS.