The couple caught canoodling at aColdplayconcert earlier this week has been turned into the subject of a short video game by singer-songwriter Jonathan Mann. Coldplay probably isn’t the first name on most gamers' minds when they think of music, but Mann’s long-running Song A Day Podcast is powered by current events, and this one must have been too juicy to pass up.
For those who need some catching up, a concert byBritish rock band Coldplaywas performed on July 16 in Foxborough, Massachusetts, in which a couple was publicly caught having an apparent affair. A camera operator caught two people embracing each other, only to quickly separate once they realized their image was being projected onto a massive monitor at the stadium, and they were called out for it by frontman Chris Martin. Footage from the incident has been viewed several million times on social media, and internet sleuths have identified the couple as the CEO and chief people officer of software startup Astronomer, one of whom is married.
In response, Mann put together a rudimentaryWhere’s Waldo-like gamecalledColdplay Canoodlersin mere hours, and he posted alinkto the game on his Twitter page. The game was vibe-coded with the use of an AI program, with Mann submitting a few rough sketches of what he thought the game should look like and asking the program to generate “an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage.” The result has been a resounding success, if not for that quality of the game than for its hot topical nature, and Mann is reeling from the number of responses he’s been seeing to his project.
Coldplay Canoodlers Video Game Captures the Scandalous Kiss Cam Moment in History
The gameplay ofColdplay Canoodlersis simple. Players assume the role of the camera operator, moving their mouse (or finger on mobile) across the screen, scanning the crowd, and attempting to find the couple. Two picture-in-picture screens resembling stadium monitors show a zoomed-in view of the audience, and players who find the dancing couple — the only audience members who actually move — must hover the cursor over them for a full second to rack up points. The8-bit graphicsare simple, but Mann was quoted by Forbes as stating that he and the AI made it in less than four hours, so that’s understandable.
The video game isn’t the only piece of popular online content generated by thememe-worthy moment. Doctored images of the concert have been flooding social media, with the Astronomer employees replaced with humorous pairings like former pro wrestling rivals Bret Hart and Bill Goldberg, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big fromSex and the City, and U.S. President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. It’s also not Mann’s first professional run-in with gaming, as it’s the second game he’s ever vibe-coded, and his 17-year-long daily podcast has included aSuper Mario Bros.-themed opera calledOde to an Old-School Video Gameand a series on the history of gaming.
