The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team member’s kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that launches snakes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a retro‑70s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a relatively tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told ourselves we could do everything with twelve people, and everyone else called us crazy." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets often force creators to punch far above their weight. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood credentials run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founder of Wolf Haus.
Together they 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, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment for Dietsch in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually building one felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and made a couple of tiny prototypes," he says. Though he had no formal game‑dev experience, the simple tools allowed him to iterate quickly.
The seed of Join Us grew from his fascination with a doomsday cult scenario that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—essentially fusing his favorite film tropes with interactive gameplay. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would eventually hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had transitioned from film production and screenwriting to video games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, Wendschuh launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back.
"I was looking at the game Joe had built and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," he says. Wendschuh then brought on Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. Initial pitches generated interest but not commitment.
The studio enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, leveraging the agency’s connections to secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. "Having CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, gave us credibility," notes Wendschuh. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris." Despite the high aspirations, Wolf Haus kept the roster deliberately small—thirteen full‑time staff members at the time of writing.
Dietsch explains that a lean team ensures every voice is heard and every member can directly influence the creative direction. To make a large‑scale open world feasible for such a compact crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across the map without the project collapsing under its own weight," he says. The first year of development was therefore split between ideation and building the very tools that would enable future expansion. The funding model also supported this tooling‑first approach. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was used to self‑fund the game's development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing later on.
"Equity partners want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools. When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to fix it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it lets a tiny team achieve something that would otherwise be impossible," Wendschuh adds. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a clear answer: the studio does not rely on it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we get up every morning," he says. Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design decisions. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio, which publicly denied using AI for its projects. Both studios emphasize respect for creative professionals, noting concerns that AI could displace voice actors, artists, and other talent.
Indeed, Join Us boasts a fully handcrafted six‑kilometre‑square map and 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—an impressive feat for an indie title. Dietsch believes this dedication to hand‑crafted content differentiates the game and aligns with the studio’s ethos.
Comparing his film background to game development, Dietsch notes the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, an idea may take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees the finished product.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualised. This rapid feedback loop fuels his enthusiasm for interactive media.
Wendschuh adds that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded: securing high‑profile directors or actors is often a prerequisite for studio green‑lighting, creating a high barrier to entry. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, the odds of commercial success without established names are slim.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says, underscoring why independent developers can thrive. Both founders trace their creative spark back to childhood.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch recalls, adding that he learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator. He believes the core mission of both mediums—delivering experiences, telling stories, and engaging audiences—remains the same, regardless of whether the canvas is a screen or a game world. In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey demonstrates how a small, tech‑savvy team with Hollywood pedigree, strategic funding, and a commitment to handcrafted artistry can defy industry expectations.
By eschewing generative AI, investing in custom tools, and leveraging a lean development model, they are poised to deliver Join Us—a quirky, expansive cult simulator that promises both chaos and charm to players worldwide.