The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted steeds, spraying machine‑gun fire before the screen erupts into a vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous “snake gun,” a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "One of the developer’s kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooter look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new gun in under thirty minutes, so I built a snake‑firing weapon on the fly.
The kid went wild, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, experimental spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small team to deliver a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up the team’s ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person crew couldn’t pull off a AAA‑level title, but we’d already proven we could punch well above our weight in indie film.
So we kept saying, ‘We’ll do it.’" Their confidence wasn’t baseless. The founders came from low‑budget, high‑creativity film backgrounds and had learned to stretch limited resources to their limits. After roughly eighty pitch meetings, they finally secured equity investments from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway to bring Join Us to life.
The studio’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who later co‑founded Wolf Haus 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 outfit founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. This cinematic lineage informs the game’s narrative tone, which blends grindhouse aesthetics with survival‑game mechanics. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s idle experimentation with Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and movie‑buff forever, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," he says. Though he had no formal training, Dietsch managed to ship a few small prototypes before deciding to chase a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love of survival games with the over‑the‑top vibe of 1970s exploitation cinema.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the concept.
Meanwhile, chief financial officer and narrative director Dooma Wendschuh brought a wealth of cross‑industry experience. After a stint as a screenwriter and producer in film, Wendschuh founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later sold a cannabis formulation company, Ebbu, for roughly C$430 million.
Wendschuh’s path to gaming was unconventional. He bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire, when an old Hollywood‑hill roommate—Michael Abbott—called with a video‑game pitch.
"I watched the prototype and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and hired Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With a core team of roughly thirteen full‑time staff, Wolf Haus faced the classic indie dilemma: how to build an expansive open‑world without the manpower of a traditional studio. Their answer was to invest heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay ideas and constructing the internal toolset that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight as the world expanded.
The equity financing from Kraftor and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑fund the entire development cycle. "The investors own a stake, so they’re motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value," Wendschuh notes. This arrangement gave Wolf Haus the freedom to build tools whenever a problem arose, even if it slowed short‑term progress, because the long‑term payoff was a sustainable, in‑house pipeline.
When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use AI for any creative tasks. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up in the morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for mundane office chores like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑square‑kilometre map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
"Even as a small indie, we felt it was vital to keep that human element," Dietsch affirms. Dietsch also contrasts the immediacy of game development with the lengthy gestation of film. In movies, an idea can take years to reach the set, requiring approvals from studios, directors, and actors. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized.
This rapid feedback loop, he argues, is one of the medium’s greatest strengths. Wendschuh observes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded: securing a handful of high‑profile talent before a studio greenlights a project. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without established names or distribution is rare. By contrast, the video‑game market has far fewer gatekeepers, making it more feasible for a small, talent‑rich team to achieve commercial success without A‑list names.
Both founders agree that, regardless of medium, the core creative impulse is the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. "When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies; it boiled down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch reflects.
"Programming on a TI‑83 taught me the basics, and whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a narrative experience. That doesn’t change."