The trailer for Join Us first appeared at the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pigs, wield machine guns, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make it to the public preview was the infamous “snake gun,” a weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about half an hour, so I built a gun that literally shoots snakes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox 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 small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title 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. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve is enough.’ Most people thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results with limited resources. Abbott and his colleagues come from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to “punch above their weight.” After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway to finish the game.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson and co‑founder of Wolf Haus—and the two 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I downloaded Unreal because it was free, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," Dietsch explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday‑cult survival concept that blended his love of grindhouse cinema with game mechanics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the duo took the idea to Dooma, a production partner.
The studio’s narrative director and CFO, Dooma Wendschuh, started his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing talent 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 roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development.
Wendschuh was impressed by Dietsch’s demo, quit his retirement, and helped assemble a leadership team that included former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider and ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, received positive reactions but struggled to close deals. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch throughout 2024, they finally landed seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors.
Despite the high ambitions, the studio remains lean: only 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch says the small size is intentional, allowing every employee to have a voice and directly influence the creative direction. To make a large‑scale open world feasible with such a compact team, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he notes. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and building the underlying tools that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight. The equity‑funding model gave the studio the breathing room to perfect these tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s capital covered development costs, while a modest amount of project finance is earmarked for marketing. Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools for current and future projects. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for any creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI services they use are administrative—calendar scheduling and email drafting—nothing that influences art, design, or narrative. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline before committing capital. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. Dietsch stresses that preserving this level of artisanal work is a core value, even for an indie‑scale operation. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent to secure a green light. In games, the feedback loop is immediate: an idea can be coded in the morning, tested in the engine the same day, and iterated upon instantly. Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes coordination, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers, allowing smaller teams to achieve success without needing A‑list stars or directors.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and delivering an experience. Dietsch recalls that as a child he wanted to make either movies or games, and a simple coin toss—plus a Christmas camera—set him on his path. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, bridging the two worlds. Today, his career exemplifies how the boundaries between film and interactive entertainment are blurring, and how a tiny, focused team can build a sprawling, high‑quality game without relying on the latest AI hype.