When he isn't doing his part to protect Australia from terrorism by performing random body cavity searches on the patrons of Colac Maxifoods, Glenn Bench is the lead designer of the up-and-coming role-playing game Dark Legacy.

People sometimes think that randomly searching the customers is overkill, but you can't be too careful. That's one thing I've learned from working on Dark Legacy - anyone out there could be a master criminal, and you can't take anything for granted. Especially around people with lots of bags.

But isn't Dark Legacy fictional?

Well, yeah. But its themes are timeless. Like kidnapping. People are kidnapped all the time, and that's not something you want to ignore.

A chilling thought. How does kidnapping fit into the overall scheme of Dark Legacy?

The game is about Ross Campbell, an ex-marine who's now a cop. He's only got one week until retirement, but then it turns out that someone broke into the HQ building of Omega Corporation and kidnapped the president's daughter, Mina. So that's where the game starts, and Rick has to search for Mina.

What is the kidnapper demanding?

What?

Does he have a ransom or some political motive or..?

I don't understand.

I'm just saying that, when someone important is kidnapped, the kidnapper usually has some kind of demand.

Well, um, I don't want to spoil that bit. It's a secret.

But wouldn't the kidnapper broadcast their demands fairly soon after they'd...

Drop it. Just drop it.

Sorry. So, tell us about Ross Campbell.

He joined the marines, but he dropped out for reasons that are secret. So he became a cop, but after he put a powerful crime lord away, and his wife and child were murdered in a revenge killing, so he turned to alcohol. We're aiming for realism. Not all gamers are naive kids. Once you can comprehend life properly, not just what's going on on Sesame Street, you realise cheesy games like Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda are stupid. And cheesy.

I can see you put a lot of thought into the character.

I wrote a short story as background for him. Well, it was actually 16 pages, which is more of a novella.

Will you be using the story in Dark Legacy?

I'll be using the concepts from it. Like, Ross has a lucky baseball bat that he sometimes uses to arrest criminals, but his sergeant isn't happy with him using it. It has a lot of comic potential.

Will there be a lot of comedy in Dark Legacy?

Some, but I'm worried that too much could detract from the menace of the kidnapper. It will be mature humour, like in Fallout. Porn and such.

Glenn Bench, thankyou for your time.

Protecting our way of life from terrorism is a job that's never done, as is the job of a trainee assistant supermarket manager, as well as being a game designer. Can Glenn Bench survive being all three at once? Find out in the next episode.