You may remember the Join Us trailer that debuted during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and the finale hints at a Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the studio behind Join Us—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids suggested, ‘What if there was a snake‑shooter?’" Dietsch recalls. "We had a modular weapon system, so in roughly thirty minutes I built a gun that launches snakes. The kid went wild, and we kept the weapon in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, says the team set out to be “disruptors.” "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person staff; twelve people can handle this.’" Most industry insiders scoffed. Yet the founders drew on a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. "Our roots are in indie film, where we learned to punch well above our weight," Abbott notes. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. 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, a production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment for Dietsch in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from actually building one," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a few tiny prototypes before tackling something larger. The concept that stuck was a doomsday cult simulator that merged survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a blend of his favorite film and game tropes. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall.
When he showed it to Abbott, the latter took the demo to Dooma, the studio’s early investor. 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. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, changed that. "He said a friend had made a video game, and when I saw Joe’s demo it blew my mind," Wendschuh recounts, prompting him to come out of retirement. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as CTO. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio pitched repeatedly, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and returning to the market in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Abbott credits the CAA relationship and the presence of veteran game execs like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path. "My agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," says Wendschuh. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it’s being built: a 13‑person full‑time team that values a flat, collaborative culture.
"Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative side, and the game feels like it was made by a specific group of people," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a lean 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 notes. The team spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would let those systems grow across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own weight.
This tool‑first mindset also aligns with the equity investors’ expectations. "Our backers want us to build reusable tools that increase the studio’s enterprise value," says Wendschuh.
"Whenever we hit a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables us to achieve big goals with a tiny team." Despite the buzz around generative AI in game development, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core content would defeat why we get up in the morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Even Krafton, which has branded itself an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for game creation.
This mirrors Krafton‑owned Neon Giant’s public stance that it does not employ AI in its pipelines. Both studios emphasize protecting creative jobs for voice actors, artists, and writers.
Indeed, Join Us’ six‑kilometre‑square world is handcrafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent—a point of pride for a studio of this size. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game production.
In cinema, an idea can take years to secure financing, cast A‑list talent, and finally shoot. "You write a script, wait three or five years, hope someone greenlights it, then you finally see it on set," he says. By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped the same morning: "You can drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and iterate right away.
That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh observes that film is heavily front‑loaded, requiring high‑profile attachments before a studio will invest. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without marquee names is rare. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—crafting an experience, telling a story, engaging an audience—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," Dietsch laughs.
"I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been a hybrid. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a narrative experience, and that essence never changes."