The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the teaser, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final 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‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built it. The kid was ecstatic, and the weapon stayed in the game,” Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us—a sprawling open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers or invite friends to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny group of developers to aim for a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person team; twelve will do.’ Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.” Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on modest budgets.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project a solid financial footing. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, 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 he turned his attention 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 learning from YouTube tutorials,” he explains. Although he had never built a game before, he managed a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept quickly attracted attention. Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including a cannabis formulation company that sold for roughly C$430 million.
After buying a remote island restaurant in Canada and planning a quiet retirement, a call from his old Hollywood roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped bring in strategic advisor Reid Schneider—formerly a VP at Warner Bros. Games—and CTO Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal. Funding proved challenging during an industry downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little commitment. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and refining their pitch throughout 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the agency’s connections and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed.
Despite the high ambitions, Wolf Haus operates with just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team ethos is intentional: “Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a specific group of people.” To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch notes.
The first year of development was split between designing gameplay and building the internal tools that would later keep the project from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the development, using the capital primarily for tool creation and core production.
“Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos,” says Wendschuh. This approach sometimes slows immediate progress but enables the tiny team to achieve results that would normally require a much larger workforce. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential,” Dietsch explains.
“Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games.” Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an “AI‑first” company—specifically required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. All of Join Us’s assets are handcrafted. The six‑kilometer‑square map was built by hand, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors, a point the team stresses as a badge of authenticity.
Dietsch finds the immediacy of game development especially rewarding compared with film. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set work and a reliance on securing big‑name directors or actors before a project ever gets green‑lit.
While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By contrast, the gaming landscape offers fewer gatekeepers; a small team can launch a successful title without needing an A‑list celebrity attached. Both Dietsch and Wendschuh agree that the core creative drive—telling a story, delivering an experience, and engaging an audience—remains the same across both mediums.
Whether it’s a cult‑themed survival sandbox or an indie film, the goal is to immerse the player or viewer in a compelling world. Their journey from Hollywood sets to a modest studio in Canada demonstrates that with the right tools, tenacity, and a willingness to defy conventional expectations, a handful of passionate creators can build a game that rivals the scope of much larger productions.