The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where hooded followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and conclude with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a spontaneous suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts, “The kid asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. He was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, experimental spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a visually impressive title to be assembled by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, explains their disruptive mindset: “We told everyone we could pull off a AAA‑level project with just twelve people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big ambitions on shoestring budgets.
The Wolf Haus founders have deep ties to Hollywood. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio. Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott, the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures—Chris Roberts’s film production venture before he moved on to Star Citizen—and later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Their film experience gave them a knack for punching well above their weight, a skill that proved invaluable when they began pitching Join Us.
After roughly eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both firms took a stake in the company, providing the seed funding needed to move from concept to full production. The financing journey was arduous, especially as the industry entered a downturn in the summer of 2023.
Nevertheless, the team persisted, eventually partnering with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to refine their pitch and attract the right backers. The genesis of Join Us traces back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life,” he explains. “It felt like there was a huge barrier to actually creating something, so I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering.” Though he had no formal training, Dietsch managed to ship a couple of small games before deciding to tackle something larger—a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, hit a technical wall, and showed the demo to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped further development.
Another key player is Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh. He began his career as a producer and screenwriter in film, 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 the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a chance call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development.
He was shown Dietsch’s prototype, which “blown his mind,” prompting him to join the effort. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core team in place, the next hurdle was funding. The studio’s pitch cycle spanned 2023 into 2024, a period marked by industry contraction. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, allowing the studio to self‑fund the game’s development while reserving a modest amount of project finance for marketing. A distinctive feature of Wolf Haus’s workflow is the emphasis on bespoke tooling.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” says Dietsch. The team invested heavily in a custom toolkit during the first year, simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and building the software infrastructure to support them. This approach ensures that as features proliferate across the open‑world map, the project doesn’t crumble under its own complexity. The equity investors encouraged this philosophy, seeing long‑term value in a studio that can create reusable tools for future titles.
When asked about the role of generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for any creative work. “We believe a game needs a human touch,” Dietsch asserts.
“Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games.” Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks such as calendar management or email drafting, the creative pipeline—from level design to voice acting—is entirely handcrafted. Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the artistic process, aligning with the studio’s own ethos.
Indeed, the game’s six‑kilometre‑square map is hand‑crafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team stresses as a badge of pride. This dedication to handcrafted content underscores their broader belief that games can be produced more democratically than films. Dietsch notes that while a movie often requires a handful of high‑profile talent to secure studio backing, a game can succeed without A‑list names, thanks to fewer gatekeepers and a more direct connection with players. Both Dietsch and Wendschuh reflect on the contrast between film and game production.
Film is “front‑loaded” with lengthy pre‑production, financing, and talent‑attachment phases, whereas games allow an idea to be prototyped within hours. “You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly,” Dietsch says, describing the exhilarating immediacy that drew him away from cinema. In summary, Join Us is a testament to what a small, tightly knit team can achieve when they combine Hollywood storytelling instincts, entrepreneurial savvy from the cannabis sector, and a commitment to building their own development tools. By refusing to outsource creativity to generative AI and by leveraging a lean, tool‑centric pipeline, Wolf Haus has created a high‑fidelity, open‑world cult simulator with just a dozen full‑time staff—proving that size isn’t the sole determinant of ambition in modern game development.