The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes during the Xbox Showcase in June, presenting a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a hail of machine‑gun fire, and ultimately face off against colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky detail that didn’t make the final cut was the "snake gun," a weapon that shoots serpents, which Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually fires snakes.
He was blown away, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recounts. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, 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, sums up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors.
We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do this.’ Most people laughed, thinking it was impossible." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets often force creators to punch well above their weight. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway needed to bring Join Us to life.
The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor Mel Gibson—who later 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 started by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. These cinematic roots inform the game’s aesthetic, which blends grindhouse horror with survival‑game mechanics. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," he explains. Though he had never built a commercial game before, Dietsch managed to create a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fuses his love of survival gameplay with the stylized violence of grindhouse cinema.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career in film and tech. He began as a producer and screenwriter, later providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his company Sekretagent Productions.
In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably Ebbu, a cannabis‑formulation firm that sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After that windfall, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development. "I watched the demo Joe had made and it completely blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. Through Wendschuh’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. With a core team of thirteen full‑time staff, Wolf Haus set out to build a sprawling open‑world map, a six‑kilometre‑square sandbox, entirely by hand. The developers emphasized tool creation from day one: "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We invested heavily in a toolkit that lets one developer expand features across the world without the project collapsing," Dietsch notes. This tooling focus consumed much of the first year, as the team simultaneously designed gameplay and built the software infrastructure to support it.
Funding from Kraftor and Lifelike Capital allowed the studio to self‑finance development, with only a modest portion earmarked for marketing. Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see Wolf Haus increase its enterprise value, which aligns with the studio’s philosophy of building reusable tools. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a custom tool.
It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a small team to achieve what larger studios do," explains Wendschuh. When asked about generative AI, the team’s answer is unequivocal: they avoid it in creative production. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate core content would defeat why we love making games," Dietsch says.
Wendschuh adds that they only use AI for administrative tasks like calendar management, not for art, design, or writing. Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for creative work, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to hand‑crafted content extends to the game’s audio: all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, and the expansive map was manually modeled and textured. Dietsch contrasts the immediacy of game development with the lengthy gestation of film. "In movies, you write a script, wait years for financing, then shoot. With games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly," he says.
Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for star talent, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can reach a global audience without A‑list names. Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games.
It came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so the love for both has always been there," Dietsch reflects.
The journey of Wolf Haus—rooted in Hollywood heritage, bolstered by cannabis‑industry riches, and driven by bespoke technology—demonstrates that a determined twelve‑person team can indeed craft a large‑scale, high‑quality game without leaning on generative AI, proving that creativity and tool‑building remain at the heart of modern game development.