The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, and oddly whimsical, moments that didn’t make the final cut was the appearance of a snake‑shooting gun.
According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a teammate’s son who asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Using an in‑house tool that lets the team prototype weapons in a matter of minutes, Dietsch built a functional snake‑gun in roughly thirty minutes. The result impressed the young fan and earned a permanent spot in the game. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled 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 philosophy: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people, and most people thought we were crazy.” The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on shoestring budgets. “We come from indie film,” Abbott notes, “so we’re used to punching well above our weight.” After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in the studio. The founding trio’s Hollywood credentials run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the 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 shift 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 that Unreal Engine was free to download, and that felt like a door opening,” he recalls. Though he had no formal training, Dietsch taught himself through YouTube tutorials, creating a handful of small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. He kept returning to the concept of a doomsday cult simulator because it fused his love of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and the freedom to blend filmic storytelling with interactive gameplay.
The proof‑of‑concept demo eventually reached Abbott, who took it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later he founded 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‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
Wendschuh was instantly impressed by the Join Us demo and agreed to help. Wendschuh recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president and current head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), to serve as a strategic advisor.
Schneider then brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core in place, the studio turned its attention to financing—a daunting task given the broader market downturn in 2023. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and resumed pitching in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The CAA connection proved valuable; the agency also represents titles like 007: First Light, and its video‑game department head, Derek Douglas, had previously represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year game‑development career.
This pedigree helped legitimize the project to investors. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its ambition relative to its staffing. At any given moment, Wolf Haus employs only thirteen full‑time members.
Dietsch explains that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where “everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and you feel like this is a game 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 says. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and building the internal tools that would later allow those concepts to expand across a six‑kilometre‑square open world without collapsing under their own weight.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been structured as equity, meaning the studio can self‑finance development while reserving a modest amount of project finance for marketing later on. This model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation and supports the tool‑centric development ethos. Whenever the team encounters a technical obstacle they cannot solve with existing assets, they simply build a new tool, even if it slows short‑term progress. The payoff is the ability to produce a complex, high‑quality game with a tiny team.
In an industry increasingly enamoured with generative AI, Wolf Haus has deliberately steered clear of using AI for creative work. Dietsch states plainly, “We don’t use any generative AI. We think a human touch is essential to game development.” Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an “AI‑first company”—insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for core development, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant.
The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the game’s massive map, which is entirely hand‑built, and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. Dietsch emphasizes that preserving that human element was a non‑negotiable priority, even for an indie‑scale project. Comparing his experiences in film and games, Dietsch notes that games offer a immediacy that film lacks. In cinema, an idea can take years to reach production, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent to secure financing.
By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine. “You can have an idea in the morning and see it in the engine that same day,” he says, highlighting the creative freedom that attracted him to interactive media.
Wendschuh points out that while film production is heavily front‑loaded—requiring intense, short‑term bursts of activity and the alignment of a few marquee names—game development distributes effort more evenly over time and faces fewer gatekeepers. Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but breaking into the film market without established stars or distribution channels is exceedingly difficult.
In games, however, the barrier to entry is lower, and a small, talented team can achieve commercial success without A‑list talent. Both founders agree that the core creative drive behind movies and games is the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
Dietsch reflects, “When I was six, I wanted to make games or movies; it came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both mediums.
Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a narrative experience, and that doesn’t really change.”