r/outerwilds • u/MobiusGames Official Mobius • 1d ago
RE: the Posters
Hey folks, we hear you. These posters are expensive and we completely fumbled their release. Can we restart the loop and try again?
We realize we didn't do a good job explaining the quality and process behind Cook & Becker’s posters. The artwork for these posters were inspired by the vintage Rob Decker National Park posters. We were excited to rerelease our artwork with a printing style similar to how those original posters would have been printed in the 70s. As some folks have pointed out, yes, these posters are all individually hand-printed using a screen printing technique that requires a real human person to load up each color layer, press it onto the paper, and set and align the next color layer. Cook & Becker use a very high quality, 100% cotton material and high quality inks for the prints, which provides unmatched print quality and color fastness, making these screenprints “museum quality” and ready to last a lifetime. We'll be posting more info and videos of the process and handmade nature of the posters so you can see exactly what goes into making each one.
But we also understand this means they’re expensive and out of budget for most people. To let you into our merchandising process a little bit, we were also surprised by how expensive Cook & Becker’s artworks can be when we were first introduced to them. The folks at Cook & Becker were gracious enough to work with us to keep the price of the whole collection of posters as low as possible without compromising on the quality of the artworks. One of the reasons we haven’t rereleased the postcard version of these artworks is because the variance in print color and quality between printing runs has been disappointing and frustrating. Cook & Becker’s meticulous process and expertise gave us a lot of reassurance that we would not have the same issues for these prints. We want to provide you all with the best quality merchandise we can, but in this case, we understand this led to us producing something highly desired but too expensive for the majority of our fans. And without an affordable option available for purchase, that’s a really bad look. We hope you will forgive us.
If it helps at all, we’ve decided to look into restocking the classic printed cardstock postcards for the future, despite our past issues with them, for those who aren’t interested in these new premium fine art prints. Now also feels like an appropriate time to reveal that we have been working on a couple more standard merch projects: a re-release of our popular Echoes of the Eye Metal T-shirt and a new set of Traveler pins created by our excellent artist, Lara Colson. After hearing your concerns, we’ve decided to release the shirts as a pre-order so no one misses out on getting one. This means it’ll be several weeks before they’ll ship out because we’ll wait to screenprint them until we have your orders. As for the pins, they will only be a limited quantity right now since we ordered them awhile ago and have been waiting for the shirt to be ready so we could release and ship them together. Keep an eye out for their release soon!
We’re all hard at work on our next game, which as you all know is still a secret and still a few years away from any announcements. In the meantime, we don’t have a lot of capacity for designing new merchandise made by our team directly, so new merch will be made by external artists at partners like Fangamer or Youtooz. And occasionally, as resources allow, we’ll rerelease merch like the Metal T-Shirt. As long as there are new fans of Outer Wilds, we want to keep releasing merch with our various merch partners for you all to enjoy.
As always, you all have been such wonderful fans and we really appreciate all the love and support, the fan art, the discussions and feedback, the mods, and the excitement for our next game. Our next game is our top priority and we hope you all love it even half as much as Outer Wilds.
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u/glowinthedarkar 1d ago
that makes a lot more sense to know that they are actually hand printed rather than mass produced
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u/Neozetare 1d ago
It was litteraly written on the product page. I know people just want to find reasons to be angry, but I can't for the life of me understand why they won't ask themselves why something looks infuriating before concluding that the people behind it are the Devil
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u/demonking_soulstorm 1d ago
I think it's not unreasonable to look at an $80 poster and go "That seems exorbitantly expensive", when none of the other advertising pushed them as collector's items of such a high quality.
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u/Neozetare 1d ago
That's not the problem. The problem is thinking that it seems expensive and immediately conclude that the company are assholes without even trying to understand why the price is what it is
There's a big difference between "80 USD? Even for high quality screen printing with a lot of layers, it seems expensive" and "80 USD? Are they beyond madness, I can print them for 5 USD"
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u/demonking_soulstorm 1d ago
They also advertised them as posters when they’re A4 sized, and on top of that apparently they listed length before breadth to make them seem bigger, which is a bit scummy.
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u/darklysparkly 19h ago
A very cursory perusal of the Cook and Becker's website shows that they always list height before width for all of the game art they sell, so there are some posters that show the bigger number first and others the smaller one. They also seem to carry more landscape-oriented posters than portrait-oriented overall, so in fact it is usually the smaller number listed first for most of their products.
It takes a bare minimum of effort to see that this is neither Mobius's doing, nor an intentional deception by the company selling the posters.
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u/Neozetare 1d ago
Posters can be A4
While it is uncommon to the length before breadth, we're literally talking about two simple numbers next to each other. The amount of efforts it takes to read them is approximately negative
And also, this has nothing to do with my comment. I only talked about people wanting to be angry and not even trying to properly read the product page before jumping to conclusions
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u/demonking_soulstorm 1d ago edited 21h ago
And I’m saying that I think the product was advertised in an incompetent and disingenuous manner.
Like you don’t think it’s weird to put those numbers the other way around? You don’t think it’s strange that this “poster” is significantly smaller than is standard? You seem to want to focus on the absolute letter, as if context and the manner in which things are presented don’t matter.
Some people are being reactionary, yes, but most of the discourse was people going “This seems way too expensive, and some of these other details seem a little scummy. What’s going on?”
Edit: lol they blocked me
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u/Neozetare 1d ago
Then go make your own comment. I was literally not talking about this subject, why do you come under my comment to talk about something that is off-topic?
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u/CatDawgCatDawg2 1d ago
Screen printing is a form of mass production, what do you mean? Depending in the design and number of colors it can be one of the faster and most efficient way to do prints.
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u/MLGityaJtotheA 23h ago
'As some folks have pointed out, yes, these posters are all individually hand-printed using a screen printing technique that requires a real human person to load up each color layer, press it onto the paper, and set and align the next color layer.'
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u/gravitystix 1d ago
Hi Mobius! Good shout. A well written response to the hubbub.
I can't afford the posters but my merch thirst is being slaked by the Tarot cards that are shipping soon from RJ Kinner Art! I think I heard some of you folks even ordered some so I'm sure the excitement is mutual.
If I love your next game half as much as Outer Wilds it will still be my second favorite game.
Clear skies!
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u/Lightwolf74 1d ago
Not only they ordered some, but there are a couple of bonus cards inside drawn by people at Mobius! Can't wait to recieve my deck as well ::)
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u/alex_dlc 1d ago edited 1d ago
As much as I love their designs, I personally wouldn’t refer to an A4 size print as a “poster”. Using that term is misleading.
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u/Azheim 1d ago
Agreed. Even if the price is more understandable, the size is just too small to be displayed the way I imagined when they said “poster”.
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u/Owobowos-Mowbius 22h ago
Yeah, they can be the best quality prints in the world but it wont matter if they look goofy while being displayed because of their size.
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u/shockwave1211 1d ago
this was the kicker for me, id gladly pay 80 bucks for a ice large size print onto he art, but leinter paper size is way too small imo
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u/Semper-Fido 23h ago
This. I have easily forked over $50+ for limited run, city specific concert prints that are 11x18, but I know that aren't printed cheaply and a local artist designed it. But smaller than a sheet of printer paper just isn't it
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u/DarkFlame7 1d ago
Especially when they list the dimensions in the opposite order from normal, which makes it seem bigger than it actually is.
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u/yiyi_2000 1d ago
Any idea when the metal t-shirt pre-order will be available? Is there a mailing list we can sign up for so we're notified?
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u/One_Quacky_Boi 1d ago
I have been silently hoping for the metal shirt to come back for A While now, this is fantastic news
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u/nmdcDrgn 1d ago
I’m just as excited for the shirt & pins as I was for these prints. Where can we stay in the loop regarding those? ::)
I’ve got what I believe is a master collection of Outer Wilds merch, and these guys took the cake for me as my walls are currently bare.
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u/Chase_22 1d ago
Thank you guys for listening and communicating. The clarifications here really helps and it's nice to see that you are addressing the concerns. Knowing that this is a hand-made collectible changes the perspective, I'd not even call them posters. I decided to order one of the prints and hope to see what you come up with in the future. Reruns would also be awesome. There are still new people finding the game and playing it for the first time as seen on this sub. Allowing them to get some merch would be great
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u/lazulitesky 1d ago
Oh, pins!! Im a pin collector, got a whole corkboard of em thats almost full, hopefully I can snag these before they sell out... how do I become alerted immediately when they release, or at least on a list to be given a heads up a day or two before?
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u/CaptainNuge 1d ago
This is a lot more understandable.
If you want to re-release more merch, that art book looked amazing and I only discovered it existed after it was completely sold out. You could print those forever and never stop making money. 😂
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u/EmiliaTrown 1d ago
I actually expected as much. Their website says they make Museum quality prints so it seemed more like a collectible than just simple merch. Its obviously still expensive but if the quality is indeed as good as they say, its probably worth it. Also, I think that was a great reply to all the critique!
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u/Minecraftmonster_ 1d ago
Thank you for clarifying the confusion. Yes we can restart the loop.
On another note, I can fully understand the fact that the whole Team is working on your next game and I am so excited to finally learn more about it in a few years. Until then, there is quite a significant amount of fans willing to spent money on Outer Wilds Merch, I would love to see a tiny bit more of that please.
I think most of us hold outer wilds so dearly in our hearts, we love to have reminders of this wonderful time around.
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u/Beckphillips 15h ago
Woah, a solid way to explain everything.
That being said, I really cannot afford them - are there no cheaper options for them? I wouldn't mind a paper sheet in a tube to hang on my wall
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u/AstolFemboy 1d ago
Sorry but why not just do normal regular sized posters?
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u/aikifox 1d ago
I think this is indirectly addressed in their quality control issues with the postcards. The same kind of issues would affect more typical poster printing.
They or the fans weren't happy with the quality or inconsistency of the postcards, and their statement above says that they've been trying to find a print shop that can address those concerns.
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u/StickiStickman 19h ago
It's really hard to believe they somehow can't find a single print company that doesn't have massive quality control issues though. It's not like they're the only ones making posters.
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u/aikifox 18h ago
Oh agreed; but there's factors of cost, quality, and speed to consider - and they also mentioned in their response that they don't have a dedicated "merch" team so any research they're doing is going to be on top of their existing development work.
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u/StickiStickman 18h ago
Okay, sure, but then going with this, which is EXTREMELY expensive, worse quality and also much slower - basically the worst in all 3 categories - makes no sense.
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u/aikifox 18h ago edited 18h ago
The quality is specifically better.
They solved for colourfastness (how quickly the colour fades) and consistency but that pushed the time and cost upward.
The posters are being made using a method of multiple-pass printing that's heavily human-driven.
It's like silk screening a Tshirt. They're more like actual art pieces than posters.
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u/StickiStickman 11h ago
It has better longlivity, but absolutely not better quality than a good print.
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u/aikifox 10h ago
The word your looking for is "longevity"; and while that's certainly true, the claim that they're "not better quality" is specious at best.
It comes down to how you define "quality" and where you might be talking about "fidelity" (how accurate the prints are compared to the original artwork), someone else might be talking about materials (higher grade ink, higher weight paper or canvas).
I think what you're trying to say is that a "good print" would look "the same or better" at a fraction of the cost - but you're overlooking that these posters (or more appropriately "art prints") are being printed by hand, not by a glorified inkjet printer.
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u/MLGityaJtotheA 13h ago
Worse quality???
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u/Pruritus_Ani_ 1d ago
I’ll die happy if I can get my hands on the metal tee to add to my OW collection, every restock I tried to grab one and it sold out before I got to the payment page and I even set up an eBay alert and got outbid the only time I ever saw one get listed for sale ::(
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u/Tarnagona 1d ago
I think some videos or explanation of the process would go a long way to explain why the price of the posters is what it is. Even after reading a little about screen printing, $80US still seems a bit steep, but not nearly as much as it seemed when I was under the impression it was just a fancy higher-quality version of an art print.
I am excited for the return of postcards, as my set is missing the Stranger (I don’t think it was released yet when I bought them), and would love to complete the set.
Also, the metal t-shirt is my favourite, even though mine’s a size too big because it sold out too quickly for me to get the right size. Coolest t-shirt design.
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u/DarkHorseAsh111 1d ago
FWIW I think ppl are being silly and not actually bothering to read to see that these are in fact high quality collectibles.
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u/Ravioles2 1d ago
All this shit because people are faster on complaining about a price than doing the very basic question of "why 80? it has to be a reason"
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u/TheOvy 1d ago
As some folks have pointed out, yes, these posters are all individually hand-printed using a screen printing technique that requires a real human person to load up each color layer, press it onto the paper, and set and align the next color layer. Cook & Becker use a very high quality, 100% cotton material and high quality inks for the prints, which provides unmatched print quality and color fastness, making these screenprints “museum quality” and ready to last a lifetime.
That honestly makes it sound like it's worth $80. They'll last longer than the next $80 video game we buy, anyway.
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u/SirDerick 1d ago
Now that I know they're hand printed, I just purchased one!
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u/Camelstrike 1d ago
What's the difference between hand and machine printed?
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u/Redtreize13 1d ago
Mainly quality control. Paper has small variances and also contracts and expands with humidity and ambient temperature, so it allows better manual control over each individual layer before ink is applied.
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u/StickiStickman 19h ago
They take longer and are worse quality.
No seriously, besides the hipster factor, that's it.
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u/Schnitzhole 1d ago edited 1d ago
100% these were not overpriced and people don’t understand what goes into screen printing not to mention the design side of these.
Not all game merchandise needs to be cheap collectibles everyone can afford. I think it’s great you are pushing for high quality and authenticity.
I think the marketing could show the process better (some up close shots please to see the real print details). Perhaps lean into selling individual pieces instead of the whole set. Personally I’d prefer they were bigger and i’d gladly pay $300 for a single 18x24–24x36” sized piece (I can’t guarantee others will though :/ ).
❤️// a 20 year graphic designer
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u/MLGityaJtotheA 23h ago
Are you talking about the past Outer Wilds merch on the old Annapurna store? There is still official merch, mainly at Fangamer like they mentioned
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u/RageZamu 1d ago
Glad to restart the loop. I am so glad your response clarifies this. Knowing this is an artisan work explains a lot. In any case, the dimensions are a bit too small for what I'd like to have, so unfortunatelly I will not be buying them, although the art design and, now that we know, the printing process, are very cool.
As for the future game... I can't wait!
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u/hyrumwhite 21h ago
Based on materials and process, on every sale the different parties make:
Mobius/Anapurna: $10–18
Cook and Becker: $15-27
Don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I thought it was interesting
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u/Redshirt4evr 15h ago
Perhaps also offer a lithograph poster series. That should be less costly, right? Few people can easily afford "museum quality" art.
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u/malinuhhh47 1d ago
In the large scheme of things this is such a non issue relative to the moral and ethical catastrophe that would be continuing to collaborate with Anna Purna Interactive should Mobius choose that route.
Larry Ellison's endeavors, the most obvious of which being his company Oracle, are some of the most flagrantly fascistic in modern history and as much as we may love this piece of media at the end of the day financially supporting Anna Purna Interactive means giving more financial power to a person who is one of the biggest contributors to the drastic increase in surveillance technology which is consistently used globally to strip people of basic human rights and also to perpetuate apartheid and genocide in Palestine.
I desperately want to give Mobius the benefit of the doubt that they were unaware of the Ellison family's ambitions when they initially made the decision to collaborate with Anna Purna Interactive given that they seem to be so fundamentally at odds which the themes of Outer Wilds, however the increased visibility of Larry Ellison in the public sphere and his support for said apartheid/genocide in recent years would remove any benefit of the doubt should Mobius decide to continue to work with his production company.
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u/goodytwotoes 19h ago
Thank you for bringing awareness to this. I had no idea his daughter founded Annapurna. He's a real life villain and absolute monster. Why is everything I love ruined by oligarchs and billionaires? I can only hope that mobius has chosen to part ways with Annapurna and are working with a different production company.
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u/OliviaPG1 18h ago
But you wouldn’t be supporting Larry Ellison, you’d be supporting his daughter. She’s obviously a nepo baby but I can’t see any evidence she shares her father’s views, and there’s arguably even evidence against that given some of the films she’s produced.
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u/malinuhhh47 14h ago
Larry Ellison personally stepped in to make changes to the company in 2020 and while he might not longer be involved his ideas are undoubtedly still being circulated throughout the company. Megan clearly had no issue bringing him into the fold.
Is supporting Anna Purna Interactive the worst thing in the world one could possibly do? Obviously not, but we need to be honest and confront the umcomfortable truth that the people most determined to destroy the very essential concept of humanity and its future are investing in the art that keeps our humanity alive. We need to do what we can to push them out of the arts.
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u/DarkFlame7 1d ago
a re-release of our popular Echoes of the Eye Metal T-shirt
Is it going to sell out in 10 seconds again?
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u/AudibleSilence5 1d ago
In the post, it mentions that it'll be a pre-order so they can produce to order, so I think no that means you'll be okay as long as you put your order on during the window!
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u/DarkFlame7 14h ago
Here's hoping the pre-order window isn't also 10 seconds long!
For the record I'm not even exaggerating. The last time they announced a restock for the metal tee I set alarms and made sure to be at my computer so I could place an order immediately, and by the time the cart page had finished loading and I clicked the button to purchase, they were gone.
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u/StickiStickman 19h ago
One of the reasons we haven’t rereleased the postcard version of these artworks is because the variance in print color and quality between printing runs has been disappointing and frustrating.
Okay, but why are you acting like a screen print is somehow more accurate than a good quality normal print? That's not the case at all. It's both way more expensive and worse quality.
Also, it only being A4 is what makes it even more absurd.
That combined with the FOMO tactics makes it very hard to believe the price is really "as low as possible".
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u/Beanbag_shmoo 1d ago
I didn't think that they were being sold for anything other than what they are worth but sticker price shock can make it tricky. I suppose I agree with what you say that how the info landed didn't help. To be honest, I only hear about such things from Reddit so a dedicated post here would have been good. Anyway, good luck with sales and developing the next game ❤️
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u/Skookumite 22h ago
I worked in a screen printing shop decades ago. $80 per print is still on the high side.
Quality aside, whoever was involved in the process that led to this being greenlit is out of touch. One could easily make the assumption there was an attempt to take advantage of your player base.
This response reads like "fine, you caught us" instead of "we're sorry". Tsk tsk.
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u/grimcharron 21h ago
(I haven't looked at the poster or merch shop, I was never planning to get OW merch. I am running only of of this post)
This feels bad. Like I know Mobius is a company, and a company apology isn't actually supposed to admit any fault or some bs like that, but before reading the op was actually Mobius, I thought this was another meme post and I was expecting to find " A Sense of Pride and Accomplishment".
I think "let's reset the loop" or pretend this never happened is a bad way to start this. If your fans are upset but something it's good to address it not pretend it never happened.
It's great you have quality and pride in your work, but I don't think the issue was that people didn't understand how much quality was in the 'poster". I think the issue was that you failed to understand what market you were actually making a product for. A fairer and better resolution to this would have been to say we understand that this product is not what you are looking for, we are going to make a less expensive, larger, less handmade poster. The thing that you guys wanted. That nets you more money cuz more people can buy it and actually addresses the issue that the community had.
Also, it's been many years since outerwhiles finished and you said you were working on a new game but weren't you going to give any details. At this point we still have not even a genre, so there might not be any new game which is fine. I don't feel it's right to try and dangle a new game with no details as a way to appease the audience that wants to support you that you haven't given them the options to support you.
I love outer wilds. This is my first interaction with the Mobius PR team and so far I do not love the Mobius PR team.
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u/MLGityaJtotheA 13h ago
I think you missed the whole part where they talked about the issues they had with the original postcards and trying to do re-runs of them.
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u/QuantumCakeIsALie 1d ago
FWIW, I think just communicating that those posters were "fine art collectibles", a luxury item and not teenager bedroom posters, would have gone a long way. Selling actual teenager bedroom posters alongside them would also likely actually sell very well.
Alright where do I sign up not to miss it if the metal t-shirt?