You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation, where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the finale hints at an eldritch, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—explains originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built a gun that literally shoots snakes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where you can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a surprisingly small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people, and most people laughed." The team’s confidence wasn’t baseless. All members came from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch minuscule budgets into ambitious projects.
"We’re used to punching far above our weight," Abbott says. After an arduous 80‑pitch marathon, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway it needed. Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio.
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 house founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering in Unreal Engine. "Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and movie‑buff my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge.
I started watching YouTube tutorials and just experimenting," he says. Despite having no formal game‑dev experience, Dietsch managed to finish a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator blending survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept pulling him back. "It let me merge everything I love about movies and games into a single IP," he explains.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced the project to Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director. Wendschuh’s career path is a patchwork of film and tech.
He began as a producer and screenwriter before moving into video games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, later sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After that windfall he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement.
Retirement, however, proved short‑lived. "Out of the blue, my old roommate Michael Abbott called.
He said a friend had made a video game and wanted me to look at it. I watched the demo, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then brought the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With leadership in place, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough task in a market that was already contracting in the summer of 2023.
The team pitched relentlessly, eventually partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles to refine their pitch deck and secure meetings throughout 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development. Abbott believes CAA’s representation, alongside the credibility of industry veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, was pivotal. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris.
That network opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," Abbott notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it’s being built: a full‑scale open‑world experience crafted by just thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the team entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and a desire to keep the studio intimate. "Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative process, and the game feels like it was made by a single, cohesive group," he says. To make such an ambitious title feasible for a tiny team, Wolf Haus 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.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools—a dual effort that also laid the groundwork for any future projects. The equity‑funded model gave the studio the breathing room to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment is essentially financing the game itself.
We’re now only taking on a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the development was fully covered by the equity partners," Wendschuh clarifies. He adds that this structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging them to support extensive tool development even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: they do not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Turning the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the reason we get up every morning," Dietsch states. Wendschuh concedes that the studio uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design decisions. 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 that the studio wasn’t relying on AI to produce the game," Wendschuh says, noting a similar stance from Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to human‑crafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices.
"That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie," Dietsch affirms. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of games over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and a massive production pipeline.
In game development, a concept can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualized within the engine. "You can see it, you can interact with it, and that immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set days and a reliance on securing a handful of high‑profile talent to green‑light a project.
By contrast, the video‑game industry has far fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for a small team to bring a product to market without A‑list actors or directors. Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across 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.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both paths have always felt natural to me," Dietsch reflects. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The tools change, but the intention stays the same."