The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the short clip, cloaked followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of firearms, and the sequence culminates in a nightmarish image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun—a quirky weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
“One of the team members’ kids asked if we could make a snake‑shooting gun,” Dietsch recalls. “We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in under thirty minutes, so I built it on the spot. The kid went nuts, and the snake gun stayed in the final game.” This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s heavy focus on technology, a philosophy that has allowed a small group of developers to deliver a high‑fidelity, content‑rich title. Michael Abbott, the chief operating officer, summed up the studio’s ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. While everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t produce a AAA‑level game, we believed otherwise.” Their belief stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where resource constraints are the norm and creative problem‑solving is essential.
The team endured eighty pitch meetings before securing equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took an ownership stake in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott, meanwhile, is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott’s résumé also includes producing credits on movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us emerged from Dietsch’s experiments with Unreal Engine.
“I discovered that Unreal was free to download and thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’” he explains. Having been a lifelong gamer and film enthusiast, Dietsch felt that the barrier to creating interactive experiences was too high for newcomers.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a handful of modest prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The concept that kept resurfacing for Dietsch was a doomsday cult simulator—an idea that merged his love for survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and narrative storytelling into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon encounter a technical wall that would force him to abandon the project. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work. Early on, he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing story services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he built and sold a cannabis‑formulation company, Ebbu, for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a random call from his former Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry.
Impressed by the demo, Wendschuh helped recruit veteran industry figures—former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider and ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand—to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer, respectively. With a core team of just thirteen full‑time staff, the studio faced the daunting task of building a large‑scale open world. To make this feasible, they devoted a substantial portion of the first development year to constructing robust, scalable tools.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be debuggable and extendable by a single developer," says Dietsch. By investing heavily in an internal toolset, the team ensured that as features proliferated across the map, the project wouldn’t collapse under its own complexity.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the majority of development, with additional project finance earmarked for marketing. Both investors prefer equity participation, which aligns their interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation. This arrangement gave Wolf Haus the freedom to prioritize tool building over short‑term milestones, even if it slowed immediate progress. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gave a categorical denial: the studio does not incorporate AI‑generated assets into its creative pipeline.
"We believe a game should retain a human touch," he says. The only AI tools the team employs are mundane productivity aids for scheduling and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—a company that has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" organization—explicitly discouraged the use of generative AI in the creative process for its portfolio studios, including Wolf Haus.
This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed developer that publicly distanced itself from AI‑driven content creation. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive map and voice work. The six‑kilometer‑square island is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 spoken lines were recorded by professional voice actors rather than synthesized voices. Dietsch emphasizes that preserving this level of artisanal craftsmanship was a non‑negotiable goal, even for a modest indie operation.
Comparing his work in games to his earlier film career, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the interactive medium. "In film, you write a script, wait years for green‑light, then finally shoot on set. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a morning, tested in the engine, and iterated upon the same day. That speed is intoxicating." Wendschuh adds that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded with financing, star attachment, and studio approval, whereas game development faces fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to get a game funded; the market is more accessible for indie creators," he notes. Both founders agree that storytelling remains the core driver across both mediums.
Dietsch reflects on his childhood, recalling how a Christmas camera sparked an early fascination with both film and programming on a TI‑83 calculator. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The tools change, but the creative impulse stays the same."