You may remember the Join Us trailer that appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation, featuring robed followers cruising on pigs while firing machine guns, and culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make it into the public preview was the infamous snake gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly highlighted. "One of the team members’ kids suggested, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a firearm that launches snakes.
The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recounted. That anecdote encapsulates the kind of chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to their 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates 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. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer.
"We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve will do.’ Most people thought we were delusional. But we’ve spent our careers punching well above our weight in indie film, so we knew how to stretch a shoestring budget," Abbott explained. After 80 pitch meetings, the team finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founders Wolf Haus with him. Together they 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 Star Citizen venture. Later, Abbott produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from actually building one.
I started watching YouTube tutorials and experimenting," he said. Despite having no formal game‑dev background, Dietsch produced a few small titles before deciding to tackle something bigger. The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that melds survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept resurfacing. "It combined everything I love about movies and games into one IP," Dietsch noted.
He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio, for further development. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, started his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company 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 and walk his dog on the beach. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back.
"I was shown a prototype of Joe’s game, and it blew my mind. That’s what got me out of retirement," Wendschuh recalled. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—a difficult task given the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, receiving positive feedback but facing a tight market. After initial outreach, they enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and resumed pitching in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh believes CAA’s clout, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was decisive. "My agent Derek Douglas, who represented me for twelve years in games, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris. That network opened doors," he said. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep the team intimate, so every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative direction," Dietsch explained. To make such an ambitious title feasible for a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a robust toolkit so that as features spread across the open world, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight," Dietsch said. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the tools that would enable future projects.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike provided capital that we used to self‑fund the game.
We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity investment," Wendschuh noted. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to build reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gave a blunt answer: "We don’t use any generative AI in the creative process. The human touch is essential to us." Wendschuh added, "We have a few AI subscriptions for scheduling and email replies, but nothing that influences design or art." Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI for creative work.
This mirrors Krafton‑owned Neon Giant’s public stance that it would not adopt the parent’s AI pivot. "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists," Wendschuh emphasized. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers, a point the team feels proud of despite their indie status. Dietsch also reflected on the immediacy of game development compared with film.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring studio approval, casting, and lengthy production schedules. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualised. "That instant feedback loop is exhilarating," he said.
Wendschuh observed that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑budget set work that depends on securing a handful of A‑list talent. While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the barriers to entry for games are lower, allowing small teams to reach large audiences without celebrity involvement. Both men agree that the core creative drive is the same across mediums: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. "When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both have always been part of me. The goal—whether on screen or in a game—is to craft a narrative that moves people," Dietsch concluded.