The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the scene culminates in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments is the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains how that oddball gun came to be.
"One of our team member’s kids suggested a snake gun," Dietsch recalls. "We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in about half an hour, so I built a snake‑firing weapon on the fly. The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates Wolf Haus’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger studio. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, says the team set out to be "disruptors." "We told everyone we could deliver a AAA‑quality experience with just twelve people," Abbott says.
"Most people laughed and said it was impossible. But we come from indie‑film backgrounds where we routinely punch far above our weight." Indeed, the founders have a long history of achieving big results on modest budgets. After roughly eighty pitch meetings, they finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway to finish the game. The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director 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 he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and thought, why not give it a try?" he says. "I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually making a game felt huge.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes." Even without prior development experience, Dietsch managed to ship a couple of small games before deciding to tackle something larger. The concept that kept resurfacing was a "doomsday cult simulator" that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a perfect marriage of his film and gaming passions.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a production partner that helped flesh out the vision. 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 services for titles like 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back.
"I was supposed to be walking my dog on a beach, when Michael rang and said a friend had made a video game. I checked it out, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts.
He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little commitment. After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, they relaunched the pitch in 2024 and finally 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 the breakthrough. "My old agent Derek Douglas, who handled my game work for twelve years, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris. That network opened doors," he says.
Despite the heavyweight résumé, the studio remains remarkably lean: only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional.
"We wanted a setting where everyone has a voice, where each person can touch the creative core, and where the final product truly feels like a collective effort." To make an expansive open‑world title feasible for such a compact crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a robust toolkit so that when features propagate across a six‑kilometre‑square map, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
In fact, the first year was spent half on game design and half on building the tools that would enable that design." The funding structure gave the studio the breathing room to perfect those tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes meant the game could be self‑funded, with only a modest slice of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Our investors are incentivized to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh notes. "Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve off‑the‑shelf, we build a custom tool. It may slow immediate progress, but it empowers a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: none.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core creative assets would defeat the reason we get up each morning." Wendschuh adds a nuance: "We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but nothing creative." Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors Krafton‑owned Neon Giant’s earlier statement that it would not adopt the parent’s AI pivot for its own projects.
Both Wendschuh and Dietsch stress that AI threatens artistic jobs, from voice actors to concept artists, and that they intend to protect those roles. The six‑kilometre‑square world in Join Us is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers, a point the developers consider a badge of pride. Dietsch 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 game development, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualised in the engine. "That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing A‑list directors or actors before a studio will greenlight a project.
While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By comparison, the gaming landscape has far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he notes, highlighting the democratising potential of interactive media. Both agree that the core creative impulse—crafting an experience, telling a story, engaging an audience—remains the same across both mediums.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs.
"I learned to program on a TI‑83, so both worlds have always felt like home. Ultimately, whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience and a narrative, and that doesn’t change."