The trailer for Join Us made a splash at the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t appear in the showcase was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child.
“His son asked, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a gun that shoots snakes. It blew his mind, and it’s still in the final game,” Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small crew to deliver a high‑fidelity experience that would traditionally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level game with just twelve people.
Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of punching above their weight in the indie film world. “We come from indie cinema, where you learn to do a lot with very little,” Abbott explains.
After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download and started learning through YouTube tutorials,” he says. Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger—a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, ran into technical roadblocks, and showed the rough build to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire.
Yet a chance call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development. Intrigued by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh re‑entered the industry, bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—as a strategic advisor, and recruiting Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing. Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
“People liked what we were showing, but it was a tough market,” Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and returned to investors in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—and the involvement of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors. “Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh says. What truly sets Join Us apart is how it’s being built: a full‑scale, open‑world title developed by just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative culture where “everyone has a voice and touches the creative process.” To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. “We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and building the tools that would let a tiny team expand the world without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The funding structure further enabled this approach. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes meant the studio could self‑finance development, using the investment to cover salaries and tool creation.
“Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑heavy workflow,” Wendschuh adds. “When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool for it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it lets a small team achieve something that would otherwise require dozens of engineers.” Despite the buzz around generative AI in game development, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative tasks. “We don’t use generative AI in the game’s creation,” Dietsch states plainly. “Our work is a human‑driven craft; handing it over to an algorithm would defeat why we love making games.” Wendschuh concedes that the studio employs AI only for administrative chores like calendar management and email drafting, not for art, design, or writing. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios.
The commitment to a human touch extends to the game’s assets. The six‑kilometre‑square map is hand‑crafted, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not AI‑generated voices.
“That mattered to us even as a small indie,” Dietsch says. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set‑time and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without needing an A‑list director or actor. Both mediums, though, share a core purpose: storytelling and creating experiences. “When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas,” Dietsch muses.
“I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience, tell a story, and give them an experience.
That goal doesn’t change between the two forms."