The trailer for Join Us made a splash at the Xbox Showcase in June, introducing gamers to a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t appear in the teaser was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. “My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires snakes.
He was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay at the heart of Join Us, an open‑world survival title that lets players recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to lead a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small team to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: “We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we proved them wrong.” The founders’ résumé reads like a Hollywood ledger. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed indie features such as Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production outfit founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced movies like Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine, attracted by the fact that the engine could be downloaded for free.
“I’d loved games forever, but the barrier to actually building one felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering, eventually making a few tiny prototypes,” he explains. Those early experiments evolved into a proof‑of‑concept for a doomsday cult simulator—a hybrid of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his two passions into a single intellectual property.
The prototype caught the attention of Abbott, who presented it to Dooma. From there, the project attracted Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, a former film producer and screenwriter who transitioned to games in the early 2000s. Wendschuh’s résumé includes writing credits for Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, as well as founding the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, later sold for roughly C$430 million.
After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. Impressed by the demo, Wendschuh recruited former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
Securing financing proved to be the next hurdle. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Initial reactions were positive—people liked the concept—but the market was tight.
After partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path to investment.
Despite the high‑profile backers, the studio remains lean: only thirteen full‑time staff members work on Join Us. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional, fostering a collaborative environment where every voice matters and each employee can directly influence the creative direction. To make a game of this magnitude feasible with such a compact crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. “Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch notes.
“We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and constructing the internal tools that would let that gameplay grow across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under its own weight.” The funding structure also supports this tool‑centric approach. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment has effectively self‑financed development, allowing the team to allocate resources toward building robust pipelines rather than relying on external deadlines.
“Our investors benefit from the studio’s increased enterprise value, so they encourage us to create reusable tools,” says Wendschuh. “It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale.” When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gives a clear answer: none. “We believe a human touch is essential. Hand‑crafting experiences is why we get up in the morning,” he says.
Wendschuh adds that while they use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the creative process. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in core development, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square island is entirely hand‑modeled, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—not synthetic voices.
Dietsch believes this dedication to artisanal production is vital, even for an indie title. Reflecting on the differences between film and games, Dietsch highlights immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring studio approval, casting, and lengthy production schedules. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing developers to see and iterate on their vision almost instantly.
Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, often dependent on securing a handful of high‑profile talent to greenlight a project, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers. “You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game,” he says, noting that the lower barrier to entry makes indie development an attractive avenue for creators. Both founders agree that, at its core, storytelling unites the two mediums. “Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them,” Dietsch concludes, underscoring the shared creative impulse that drives his work across both Hollywood and the interactive world.