Everyone has heard the old saying “never let a good crisis go to waste”. However, this adage usually has more to do with politics and warfare than with game design and kiss cams. Jonathan Mann has become a one-man army in his own right thanks to the recent release of his interactive simulator of the now-iconic Coldplay Kiss Cam, cheekily titled Coldplay Canoodlers.
The ‘Song a Day’ Man Behind Coldplay Canoodlers
Jonathan Mann isn’t solely a game designer by trade, but a renowned and prolific musician. Also known as “The Song a Day Man”, Mann took up the task to write one song per day more than seventeen years ago. That amounts to more than six thousand songs under his belt in this project alone. One almost has to wonder how Mann found the time in his schedule to pick up game design on the side. Well, Mann was kind enough to answer this question in the same Twitter post that he debuted the game with.
Mann claimed to have employed “vibe coding” for this particular project, which is a style of software development popularized by Canadian computer scientist Andrej Karpathy earlier this year. Vibe coding sees the developer work alongside a large language model as if the two were pair programmers. Contrary to other AI-assisted techniques, vibe coding resembles a creative process, rather than a scientific one.
Coldplay Kiss Cam Controversy Explained
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the so-called “Coldplay Kiss Cam” is practically the story of the week. Due to the fallout of the original viral moment, thanks to things like Canoodlers, it very well may end up becoming the story of the month. In short, the jumbotron at a recent Coldplay concert put a very literal spotlight on the members of an alleged affair.
The pair in question is made up of Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot, the respective then-CEO and HR Chief of Astronomer. After being caught in an embrace on camera, Cabot quickly hid her face, and Byron ducked out of frame altogether. The visual comedy of the moment was pretty self-explanatory, even leading Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin to make a joke at their expense while the jumbotron footage played.
This naturally led to a major corporate shakeup, with Byron being removed and replaced as CEO in a matter of days. Sleuths on the internet wasted no time either, unearthing what seemed like a never-ending gold mine of lore about the alleged couple. Chris Martin even doubled down with a lighthearted warning about the Coldplay Kiss Cam at the band’s latest concert.
Coldplay Canoodlers Review, and Where to Play It
Coldplay Canoodlers is available to play online free-of-charge. Here at GamesHub, we thought it might be necessary to give the game a try ourselves. You know, for the sake of journalistic integrity. Loading into the game, you can instantly see why the game has become almost as viral as the original moment did.
Players are put in the role of the camera operator for a Coldplay concert, and are tasked with catching the titular “canoodlers” in the act. Byron and Cabot are represented by a compressed image of their embrace, which is hilariously edited into various parts of the stadium. As players scroll around looking for the now-alleged canoodlers, they are treated to a retro rendition of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida.
As the cherry on top, Coldplay Canoodlers even features a scoring system. Players are rewarded with ten points each time they catch the JPEG-ified CEO-and-HR Chief duo. I can see it now; hundreds of college dorms with whiteboards nailed to the wall, everyone in the hall trying to compete for the high score.
If the viral success of Coldplay Canoodlers is any indication, it looks like the Coldplay Kiss Cam just might be here to stay. As one New York Magazine contributor Rebecca Jennings so eloquently put it, don’t be surprised if you see this resurface around Halloween time for a good couple’s costume. One can only hope it isn’t too long before we get the chance to play 2 Coldplay 2 Canoodlers.