The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by a child’s off‑hand suggestion. “One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in roughly half an hour, so I built it on the spot.
The kid went nuts, and the snake gun stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures 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 join a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with a dozen people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets. “We come from indie filmmaking, so we’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus.
Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later 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 from Dietsch’s experimentation with Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials,” he recounts.
Although he had no formal game‑dev background, he managed to create a few modest prototypes before deciding to tackle something more ambitious. The concept of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing because it fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, marrying the aesthetics of his favorite movies with interactive gameplay.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun 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 C$430 million (≈$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 a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. “I was shown a video of Joe’s prototype, and it completely blew me away.
It convinced me to come out of retirement,” Wendschuh says. He 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 of Ubisoft Montreal, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a downturn in the gaming sector. “People liked what we were building, but the market was tough,” Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and returned to investors in 2024.
Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed the seed round. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—was instrumental, as were seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand.
“My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me during my twelve‑year stint making games and even led the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh recalls. Despite the Hollywood‑heavy résumé, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team structure was a deliberate choice: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product.” To make such an ambitious project 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 developer,” he explains. “We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” Consequently, a substantial portion of the first development year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would support it—and that will serve future projects as well.
The funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. “Krafton and Lifelike are equity partners; their investment essentially self‑funded the game,” says Wendschuh.
“We’re now adding a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity.” This equity‑first approach aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building robust tools even when it slows immediate progress. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up each morning,” he says.
Wendschuh adds that while the team may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the artistic side of development. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The team’s commitment to human‑created content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by real actors. “That level of handcrafted detail mattered to us, even as a tiny indie studio,” Dietsch affirms.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
In games, however, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours. “You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating,” he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a director or star often determines whether a project gets greenlit. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the video‑game landscape has fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve success without A‑list talent. Both men agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums.
“When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas,” Dietsch laughs.
“I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both. Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience, tell a story, and create an experience. The medium changes, but the goal stays constant."