You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and culminate in a vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new gun in about thirty minutes, so I built it on the spot. The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or fellow players—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small group to craft a high‑fidelity experience 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. Everyone told us you needed a hundred people to pull this off; we said, ‘No, we can do it with twelve.’" Their confidence stems from a history of punching far above their budgetary weight.
Coming from indie film backgrounds, the founders are accustomed to doing a lot with limited resources. After 80 pitches, they finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later 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 move to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials," he says.
Though he had never built a game before, he managed a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept was quickly taken to Dooma for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for 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 the industry. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh re‑entered the fray, bringing on former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and recruiting Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging in a market downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, initially without representation. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles, they returned to the circuit in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have stayed closed. Despite the high aspirations, Join Us is being built by a core team of just 13 full‑time staff.
Dietsch emphasizes that this small size is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product." To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tools from the outset. "Any system in the game has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal toolset that would keep the open‑world from collapsing under its own weight.
The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s investments were used to self‑fund the game, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Equity partners want the studio to increase in enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tooling," says Wendschuh. "When we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it lets a tiny team achieve something that would normally need dozens of engineers." When asked about generative AI, the team draws a firm line. Dietsch states plainly, "We don’t use any generative AI for creative work.
We believe a game needs a human touch, and handing the process over to an algorithm defeats the reason we get up in the morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. Both founders stress that the decision is ethical as well as artistic. "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists," Wendschuh says.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent, a point the team sees as a badge of pride for an indie studio. Dietsch also notes a key advantage of games over film: immediacy.
In cinema, a concept can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the coordination of high‑profile talent. By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to iterate rapidly.
"You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says. Wendschuh agrees, observing that film production is heavily front‑loaded with pre‑production hurdles, while games face fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, success is unlikely.
In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to break through," he explains. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and experience design. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch reflects.
He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, merging his love of narrative and interactivity. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them. The tools change, but the goal stays the same."