The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers ride on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What viewers didn’t see was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. According to Dietsch, one of the developers’ sons asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” The team already had a modular weapon system, so within roughly thirty minutes Dietsch scripted a gun that fired serpents. The kid’s delight was genuine, and the weapon remains a permanent fixture in the game.
This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. Beyond the off‑beat gameplay, the project showcases Wolf Haus’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be built by a remarkably small staff.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, explains that the team set out to be “disruptors.” “We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level game with just twelve people. Most people laughed and called it impossible,” he recalls.
Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where crews routinely punch far above their budgetary weight. After eighty pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who also 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 originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creating one was huge,” he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a few modest prototypes.
The concept that persisted was a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—essentially a love letter to the movies and games he adored. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, hit a technical wall, and showed the result to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began 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 like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After cashing out, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. A call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, about a video‑game project reignited his interest, and he quickly became a key advisor, bringing on former Warner Bros.
Games VP Reid Schneider and former Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as strategic hires. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. Initial reactions were positive—“this looks cool”—but securing capital was tough.
After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path.
Despite the high‑profile backers, the development team remains lean: just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional, fostering an environment where every voice matters and every employee can influence the creative direction.
To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the project to scale without collapsing under its own weight. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s investments were used to self‑fund the game’s development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even when they temporarily slow down feature work. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: none. The studio deliberately avoids AI‑generated assets, believing that a human touch is essential to the game‑making process.
“We love making games ourselves; handing the work over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we get up in the morning,” he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting—not for any creative function. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. This dedication to manual craftsmanship is a point of pride for a team that could easily have outsourced or automated many of these tasks. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game production.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: “You can have an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly,” he says, highlighting the immediacy that attracted him to interactive media. Wendschuh notes that film projects are front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers, allowing smaller teams to achieve success without A‑list talent.
Both founders agree that, at their core, filmmaking and game development share a single creative impulse: to tell stories, craft experiences, and engage audiences. Whether through a camera lens or a game engine, the goal remains the same—to transport people into a world of your own making.