Glenn Bench is a game designer and trainee assistant manager at Maxifoods. For the past six months, he has been working alongside his colleagues at Dark Neon Studios on what they hope to be the videogame world's next big thing, Dark Legacy.

If you play games as often as you design them, you'll realise, like I did, that there are far fewer classic games being produced recently. Final Fantasy VII was probably the last. I know better than anyone, because I play a lot of games and it seems like the game industry... actually, the entire creative industry in general, has just lost the juice. Just in my spare time, I've created all sorts of original games. Well, not the programming part. I'm not really a math or logic person.

What exactly is it that you do?

Concepts. Mostly plot twists.

So you're the writer?

I'm a general, like, ideas man. But I'm also writing it along with some other members of Dark Neon Studios. I'd been writing a lot of fantasy up until I started Dark Legacy. Well, not really writing, but I came up with a lot of concepts. With Dark Legacy, I really wanted to challenge myself, so I moved from fantasy to science-fiction, which is a whole other field. After a lot of research, I realised that the difference between the two mainly seems to be the time period.

And Dark Legacy is set in the future?

Yeah, about one thousand years into the future, although I don't want to give away the exact date. Humanity has spread across the world like a virus, and the only way to have enough, you know, room for everyone, is to build new cities on big platforms in the sky. The rich people live on the platforms, and they throw their waste onto the poor people below. The world is also...

Controlled by corporations?

...Yeah.

Sorry. Go on.

It might seem predictable so far, but that's only because I don't want to give away any of the secrets. For instance, do you know what's in the secret abandoned underground chemical weapons lab?

No.

Exactly. It's a secret.

Is it zombies?

...Anyway, the point is that Dark Legacy is going to be something totally different. It's a game made by gamers, for gamers. None of these so-called "professionals" who wouldn't know a good game if they played one. Which they don't.

Does anyone in Dark Neon Studios have prior game making experience?

Well, like I said, I've done a lot of concepts. They don't just conceptualise themselves.

I meant in terms of having programmed or designed something tangible.

You'll have to clarify.

I'm sorry, we're out of time.

And so, the sun sets on another day in the dynamic world of amateur videogame design. Join us next episode when we delve deeper into the equally dynamic world of Dark Legacy.