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 teaser, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a massive, Cthulhu‑like tangle of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut 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 child’s offhand suggestion.
“One of the team members’ kids asked, “What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?” I had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale a weapon in minutes, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires serpents. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game,” Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader technical approach: achieve high‑fidelity results with a remarkably small team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the studio as a group of “disruptors.” “We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.
But we’ve spent our careers punching far above our weight on indie film sets, so we knew how to stretch a limited budget,” Abbott explains. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders bring deep Hollywood connections to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who also co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch tinkering in Unreal Engine.
“Unreal Engine was free to download, and I felt there was a huge barrier to creating something yourself. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few small prototypes. Even without prior experience, I managed to create a couple of tiny games before deciding to aim bigger,” he says. The concept that stuck was a “doomsday cult simulator,” a mash‑up of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that would let him fuse his love of movies and games into a single intellectual property.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a venture that would later become instrumental in the studio’s financing.
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 narrative services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s 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, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and walk his dog on the beach. “I thought I was done, but then my old roommate Michael Abbott called out of the blue.
He told me a friend had made a video game, and I watched Joe’s demo. It blew my mind and pulled me back into development,” Wendschuh recounts. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving positive feedback but facing a skeptical market. After enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus secured seed capital from Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of veteran industry figures such as Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the Hollywood pedigree, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: “We wanted a team where everyone has a voice, where each person can touch the creative direction, and where the final product truly feels like it was made by a specific group of people,” he says. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible for a tiny crew, 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.
We built a toolkit that lets one developer iterate without the project collapsing under its own weight. A large portion of the first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and constructing the tools that would enable it,” Dietsch explains. The funding structure gave the team the runway to perfect these tools. Both Krafton and Lifelike Capital are equity partners, meaning the money they invested directly finances development.
The studio now adds a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game is essentially self‑funded through the equity stakes. “Equity investors care about the studio’s enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive tooling. Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we create a tool to address it.
It may slow development, but it lets us achieve AAA‑level quality with a handful of people,” Wendschuh notes. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it in the creative pipeline.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games. The only AI we use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email replies,” he says.
Wendschuh adds that Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in game creation, mirroring a stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. Both executives stress that AI threatens creative jobs, from voice actors to artists, and that the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely handcrafted, with all 15,000 voice lines recorded by human talent.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before it ever sees the screen.
In games, the iteration loop is immediate: “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action the same day. That immediacy is exhilarating,” he says.
Wendschuh observes that movies are heavily front‑loaded with intense, high‑budget production phases, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers. “Anyone can shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, it rarely breaks through.
In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to succeed; the barrier to entry is lower, and the chance of finding an audience is higher,” he explains. Both agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch recalls his childhood desire to make either movies or games, noting that a simple gift of a camera or a programming‑capable calculator could have steered his career either way.
“Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The tools change, but the purpose stays the same,” he concludes.