You may recall that the trailer for Join Us made an appearance during the Xbox Showcase in June. It showcased a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation, featuring robed followers riding pigs and firing machine guns, before cutting to an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What wasn’t shown was the infamous snake gun, a detail explained by Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the studio behind Join Us.
"One of the developers’ kids came up with the idea," Dietsch recounts. "He asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that launches snakes. It blew his mind, and we kept it in the final product." That anecdote captures the kind of chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or teammates in co‑op mode—to their retro‑70s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a remarkably small team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s COO, summed it up succinctly: "We set out to be disruptors." "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person staff; twelve can do the job.’ Most people thought we were crazy and dismissed the idea," Abbott said. Yet the founders have a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets. "Our background is in indie filmmaking, so we’re accustomed to punching far above our weight," Abbott added.
After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who also co‑founded Wolf Haus, and 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 transition to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began experimenting in Unreal Engine. "It started simply: I discovered Unreal Engine was free to download," he explains.
"I’d loved video games for years, but the barrier to actually creating something felt enormous. I downloaded Unreal, followed YouTube tutorials, and started tinkering." Despite having no formal game‑development background, Dietsch managed to finish a few small projects before deciding to aim higher. "I kept returning to the notion of a doomsday cult simulator because it merged my love for survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, fusing my film and gaming passions into a single IP." He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, treating it as a test to see how far he could push the idea before hitting a technical wall.
He showed the demo to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a producer and screenwriter in film before moving into games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing talent for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, later sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life.
"I thought I was done, just walking my dog on the beach," he says. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call pulled him back. "My old roommate Michael Abbott from the Hollywood Hills rang me up and said, ‘A buddy of mine made a video game.’ I get a lot of those calls, but I watched the demo and it blew me away, so I came out of retirement." Wendschuh then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly a programmer at Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team forming, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult during an industry downturn. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by market contraction.
"People liked what we were building, but the timing was tough," Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, they enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and returned to investors in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—CAA also represents titles like 007: First Light—was instrumental, as were veteran game industry figures like Schneider and Chartrand.
"Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, was also my agent when I spent twelve years making games. He once headed the video‑game department at William Morris." Beyond pedigree, Join Us is noteworthy for being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope," says Dietsch, emphasizing the studio’s desire to keep a tight‑knit culture where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative process. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a lean crew, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets one developer manage features that eventually spread across a massive map, preventing the project from collapsing under its own weight. The first year was as much about tool development as it was about game design." The funding structure gave the team the runway to perfect those tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike are equity partners; their capital financed the entire development," Wendschuh says. "We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game was built entirely with their equity investment." Equity backing also aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of tool‑centric development.
"Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a tool to address it," Wendschuh adds. "It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this magnitude." When the conversation turns to tiny‑team development, generative AI often comes up. Dietsch is clear: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Turning the creative process over to an AI would defeat why we get up each morning." Wendschuh concedes they use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design decisions. "We have a few subscriptions for productivity, but nothing that influences the game’s creative output." Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged Wolf Haus from employing generative AI in the creative pipeline. "Our investors wanted assurance we weren’t using AI to make the game," Wendschuh notes, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which also denied using AI for its projects. Both Wendschuh and Dietsch stress that the human element extends to voice work and world building.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us was handcrafted, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors—choices they deemed vital even for an indie title. Dietsch highlights a key advantage of games over film: immediacy.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring scripts, greenlights, and massive crews before a single frame is shot. "With games, you can conceive an idea this morning and see it in the engine by afternoon. You can literally touch it and iterate instantly," he says. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set periods and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure financing.
While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By contrast, the barriers to entry for games are lower, and success doesn’t hinge on A‑list names.
Both agree that storytelling is the common thread. "When I was six, I wanted to make games or movies; it boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects. "I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both mediums. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The core purpose remains the same."