On this week’s The Drill Down podcast, Facebook protects its bottom line while secretly spying on you, a huge trove of leaked Russian documents, a possible cause — and cure — for Alzheimer’s, Tosin’s report from PAX South… and much, much more.

On this week’s Drill Down podcast, Tosin goes to PAX South, the NSA gets to keep spying on Americans, Nintendo switches to cardboard for gaming, how AI is manipulating you into microtransactions … and much, much more.

At this year’s PAX South, I spoke with Carlos Rocha, the CEO and founder of Below the Game. Carlos founded the company in 2009 with a desire to make meaningful storytelling games.

With a passion for literature, he sought to combine his readings with games in an interactive way never seen before, and during an experimental project four years ago Haimrik was born.

On this week’s Drill Down podcast, Tosin recaps PAX South, drones at the Super Bowl, the tech world opposes President Trump’s immigration ban, Snap goes IPO, factory robots on the rise, Tesla breaks another speed record, and more.

At this year’s PAX South, I got to play a cooperative puzzle game called Death Squared created by SMG Studio. In Death Squared, each player controls a bot who is trying to escape a laboratory, but with every move comes the chance that a trap will be triggered and a fellow companion will be doomed. To pass each stage, all characters must reach their respective portals unharmed.

At this year’s PAX South I was introduced to a video game called Beat Cop, a point and click adventure where you play a cop on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Someone has framed you for a crime you didn’t commit, so now as a parking enforcement officer you must find more clues and figure out who the real guilty party is. All while doing your day job of handing out tickets and stopping other violations.

At this year’s PAX South, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the creators of the popular web comic Penny Arcade, announced a brand new Expo called PAX Unplugged. Unlike the current PAX conventions, which have a large video game focus, PAX Unplugged will concentrate exclusively on tabletop games. “With the rise of popularity of board games, we wanted to provide a dedicated space where fans can come together,” said Holkins. “We will continue to have tabletop games at every PAX, but Unplugged will focus on stepping away from the TV, monitor and phone to foster face-to-face multiplayer experiences.”

In conjunction with ReedPOP, this sixth addition to the current line-up of PAX events will debut this year from November 17th-19th in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center. Read ReedPOP and Penny Arcade’s vision for it here below.

At this year’s PAX South, I spoke with Thibaut Hanson, a programmer at Fishing Cactus, about their latest game Epistory.

Epistory is an adventure game that tells the story of a writer lacking inspiration who asks her muse to help write her latest book. The adventure begins with a girl on a fox traversing a world that opens up as you solve its mysteries and defeat its enemies.

This week, Tosin recaps the best from PAX South 2016, Who won the Super Bowl…online?, Are self-driving car systems legally the driver?, Twitter turns things upside-down, Why does Amazon need brick-and-mortar stores?, What happens when you get squashed between two portals? …All this and more on The Drill Down.

Loot Crate is a monthly subscription service that provides its audience special gaming and geek-centric gear. At this year’s PAX South, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob Holden, VP of Category Management, on his organization and their newly announced Loot Gaming crate.

You can listen to the interview below.

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