You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑sim where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and culminate in a showdown with colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element 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, proudly attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What if there’s a gun that shoots snakes?’" Dietsch recounts.
"Because we had built a modular gun system, I could prototype it in roughly thirty minutes. The kid went nuts, and the snake gun survived into the final build." That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience that lets players recruit AI followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, content‑rich title to be produced by a remarkably lean crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: “We set out to be disruptors.” "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do this.’ Most people laughed and said it was impossible," Abbott says. "But we come from indie‑film backgrounds where we’ve learned to punch far above our weight. After 80 pitches we finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus." The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 started by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us was born when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he explains.
"I started learning from YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and then the cult‑sim idea kept resurfacing because it merged my love of survival games with grindhouse cinema." He built a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall soon. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing.
He contributed narrative work to 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 call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"I was looking at Joe’s demo and it blew my mind, so I left retirement," Wendschuh says. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, and Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—an uphill battle in a market downturn that began in 2023.
"People liked what we were building, but the climate was tough," Dietsch notes. The studio enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, leveraged those connections, and continued pitching throughout 2024 until Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed the seed round. Abbott credits the CAA relationship and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for the eventual success.
"My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me during my twelve‑year game‑making stint, helped open doors," says Wendschuh. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being developed by just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model was intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership over a game that truly reflects our collective vision." To make such a scope feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "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 open world without the project collapsing under its own weight. The first year was as much about building those tools as it was about designing gameplay." The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Our investors want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh says. "When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a custom tool.
It may slow us down short‑term but it lets a tiny team achieve something that would otherwise require dozens of engineers." When asked about generative AI, the team’s stance is clear: they avoid it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up every morning," Dietsch asserts. Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the artistic side of development.
Even Krafton, which has publicly branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s pipeline. "They wanted to be certain they weren’t funding a studio that relied on AI for core creative output," Wendschuh notes, echoing similar statements from Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the six‑square‑kilometer map, which was manually built, and the 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. "Those details mattered to us, even as a small indie," Dietsch says. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio greenlights. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration.
"You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says, describing the exhilarating immediacy of game development. Wendschuh points out that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work and heavy reliance on a few marquee names to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the gaming industry has fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for a small, talented team to reach a wide audience without A‑list talent. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread binding the two mediums.
"Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience," Dietsch concludes. "It all started when I was six, flipping a coin between a camera and a game console.
I ended up learning programming on a TI‑83, and that love for creation has carried me through both worlds."