The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the more memorable moments that didn’t make the final cut was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child.
"His son asked, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had a modular weapon system, I was able to prototype a snake‑firing gun in roughly half an hour.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game." That anecdote captures the chaotic, player‑driven spirit that Join Us aims to deliver. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience that lets players recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. Yet the game’s ambition is matched by an equally bold development philosophy: creating a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title with a team that never exceeds a dozen full‑time developers.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the mindset succinctly: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed." The founders’ background helped them believe that claim. Both Dietsch and co‑founder Louie Gibson studied film at Chapman University in California, where they collaborated on the indie movies Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, the son of renowned Hollywood makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures—a company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe—and later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
This blend of indie‑film hustle and Hollywood pedigree gave the team a knack for punching far above their budgetary weight. Funding the project proved to be a marathon. After roughly 80 pitches, Wolf Haus secured equity investments from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in the studio.
The financing allowed the team to remain self‑sufficient throughout development, with the capital earmarked primarily for tool creation and production costs rather than external outsourcing. The genesis of Join Us traces back to Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and film lover my whole life," he explains. "The biggest barrier was the perception that making a game required massive resources.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes." Those prototypes evolved into a proof‑of‑concept that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse‑cinema aesthetics—a doomsday cult simulator that married his love for horror movies with interactive gameplay. He presented the demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, a production partner.
Meanwhile, Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, brought a rich film‑to‑games pedigree, having written for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his studio Sekretagent Productions. Wendschuh also founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was lured back into the industry by a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott.
"I was ready to walk my dog on the beach, but the game blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement," he says. He then recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as a strategic advisor, and brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. The timing of the fundraising rounds coincided with a downturn in the broader gaming market, making the search for capital especially challenging.
"People liked what we were building, but the climate was tough," Dietsch notes. The studio eventually partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation, which helped open doors to investors and strategic partners. A hallmark of Wolf Haus’s approach is the heavy investment in in‑house tooling. "Every system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
"We spent a huge portion of the first year not just designing the game, but also building the tools that would let a tiny team expand the world without the project collapsing under its own weight." Because the funding came from equity partners rather than traditional publishers, Wolf Haus retained creative control and could allocate resources toward tool development rather than short‑term milestones. "Our investors want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support our tool‑centric ethos," says Wendschuh.
This philosophy sometimes slows raw development speed but enables a small crew to produce a game of a scale that would normally require dozens of developers. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for any creative aspect of Join Us. "We believe a human touch is essential. AI can help with calendar management or email replies, but we never use it to generate art, dialogue, or design," says Dietsch.
Interestingly, Krafton—an "AI‑first" company—explicitly requested that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios like Neon Giant. All voice work in Join Us, amounting to roughly 15,000 lines, was recorded by human actors, and the six‑kilometre‑square map was handcrafted. This commitment to handcrafted content underscores the studio’s dedication to preserving jobs for voice talent and artists, a principle that resonates with the founders’ film background.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals from studios, directors, and actors before a single frame is shot. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized.
"That immediacy is intoxicating," he says. Wendschuh adds that while film production is heavily front‑loaded with pre‑production hurdles, games have far fewer gatekeepers—no need for A‑list actors or directors to secure a green light.
Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering a narrative and an emotional journey," Dietsch concludes.
"It’s a coin toss that landed me in games, but the creative drive remains the same."