The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that 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, proudly recounts. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built it. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch explains.
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 join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a far larger team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve will do.’ Most people laughed, saying it was impossible." Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where small budgets often force creators to punch well above their weight. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project a solid financial footing. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the son of actor‑director 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 shift to Star Citizen.
Abbott also produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from actually building anything," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, created a few modest titles, and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a hybrid of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his film and gaming passions into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner who helped shape the project’s direction.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"I was looking at the video Joe had made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," he says. He introduced the demo to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly of Ubisoft Montreal, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding, which proved difficult during an industry downturn that began in 2023. Despite positive reactions to the game’s concept, the studio had to regroup, enlist CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation, and continue pitching throughout 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to move forward.
Wendschuh believes CAA’s network—representing titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand were instrumental. "My agent Derek Douglas had been my representative during my twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to its staff size: only 13 full‑time employees. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where everyone’s voice matters and each person can touch the creative core. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight." This tool‑first approach consumed much of the first development year, but it also laid the groundwork for future projects. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment allowed us to self‑fund the entire development," says Wendschuh. "We’re now only taking on modest project finance for marketing, but the core game was built with their equity capital." This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of in‑house tools. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core game content would defeat why we get up in the morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches design, art, or writing.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
Dietsch stresses that even as a modest indie, they wanted the world to feel genuinely lived‑in, not assembled by algorithms. Transitioning from film to games, Dietsch finds the immediacy of interactive media exhilarating. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals before a single shot is filmed.
In games, an idea can be prototyped in a few hours, placed directly into the engine, and experienced instantly. This rapid feedback loop fuels his creative energy. Wendschuh observes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded: securing high‑profile talent, obtaining studio green‑lights, and navigating distribution channels are all gate‑keeping steps that can stall a project for years. By contrast, the game industry has far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a polished product without needing A‑list actors or directors.
This democratization makes game development an attractive avenue for creators seeking artistic freedom and quicker realization of their visions. Both men agree that, at their core, storytelling is the common thread.
"Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience," Dietsch reflects, recalling his childhood fascination with both mediums. This shared purpose drives Wolf Haus’s ambitious, tool‑driven, and decidedly human‑centric approach to building Join Us, a cult‑themed sandbox that promises both chaotic fun and meticulous craftsmanship.