At work today, Shannon O'Neil may be sent to test new video games in a game room called the Treehouse. He may spend time on the phone helping a Super Mario player who's stuck on Level 3. Or he may end up traveling across the country to teach people to play a brand-new game.
Is O'Neil the luckiest guy in the world or what? He works as a game counselor at Nintendo of America, helping people play video games.
"I grew up on video games," says O'Neil, 28. "Ever since I could get a controller in my hand, I've played video games."
For the past eight years, O'Neil has worked at Nintendo's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. He's one of about 200 Nintendo game counselors. O'Neil has identified "bugs," or programming mistakes, in games before they were sold to the public. He has helped thousands of callers to 1-900-GAMEPLAY get out of tight spots in their game.
When O'Neil was growing up in Seattle, Washington, he dropped plenty of quarters into the Donkey Kong machine at his local arcade. "That was one of the first games that really got me hooked," he says. Since then, he's become an expert at dozens of games. He got all 100 puzzle pieces in Banjo Kazooie, and he's completed every level on nearly every game Nintendo makes.
But his job takes more than quick thumbs. O'Neil says his college math and computer courses help him figure out the technical details of the games. And his patience with callers doesn't hurt either. Once, a group of elderly folks called from a retirement home. They were playing Zelda! "They kept passing the phone around to ask me questions," O'Neil says. "I could hear them telling one another, 'Push the rock! No, don't push the rock!' They were having fun."
O'Neil wouldn't mind working at Nintendo forever. "I get to travel places; it's a great company," he says. "And I get to play video games!" Even he can't quite believe his luck.