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, cloaked cultists charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous "snake gun." "One of the developers’ 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 about thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly. The kid went wild, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or teammates—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to emerge from a remarkably lean development team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could deliver a AAA‑level title with just twelve people, and the industry laughed. But we’ve spent our careers punching above our weight in indie film, so we knew it was possible.” After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment for Dietsch in Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games as much as movies. The biggest barrier was the perception that creating a game required massive resources. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering, eventually building a few small prototypes,” he explains. Though he had no formal game‑development background, Dietsch’s early experiments convinced him to chase a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse‑cinema aesthetics.
The proof‑of‑concept was a rough, sandbox‑style demo that Dietsch showed to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio. From there, the project attracted Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, a former film producer and screenwriter who had pivoted to games in the early 2000s.
Wendschuh founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later sold his cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu for roughly C$430 million and, after a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, was lured back into the industry by an old Hollywood‑hill roommate. "I got a call out of the blue from Michael Abbott about a game Joe had built.
I watched the demo and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He brought on Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor.
Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task given the industry’s downturn in mid‑2023. The studio enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) to handle representation, leveraging the agency’s connections to secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
"Having CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," notes Wendschuh. The investors’ equity model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect its internal tools before scaling the game. Wolf Haus deliberately kept its staff tiny—13 full‑time members at the time of writing—to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice mattered. Dietsch emphasizes that this approach required a heavy upfront investment in tooling.
"If a system can’t be debugged and scaled by a single developer, the whole project collapses. We spent the first year building a robust toolkit that let us iterate quickly while the world expanded," he says.
This tool‑centric mindset means that future Wolf Haus projects will benefit from the same infrastructure, reducing the need for large teams. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was used exclusively for development, with a small portion earmarked for marketing.
Because the investors hold equity, they are incentivized to support the studio’s long‑term value creation, including the time‑intensive practice of building custom tools. "We solve problems by building the right tool, even if it slows immediate progress. That trade‑off lets a small crew achieve something that would normally require dozens of people," explains Wendschuh.
When asked about generative AI, the team’s stance is clear: they avoid it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games," Dietsch asserts.
Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from AI‑driven content creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio.
The commitment to handcrafted content is evident in Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map, which was manually designed, and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to keep the experience fully human," says Dietsch.
Comparing film and game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, a concept can take years to materialise, requiring studio approval, casting, and extensive pre‑production.
By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualised in the engine. "You can see your idea come to life that same day, and that immediacy is exhilarating," he notes.
Wendschuh observes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with massive costs incurred before any footage is shot, often hinging on securing A‑list talent. While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film, breaking through without established names or distribution is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a polished product without needing celebrity endorsements.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to succeed in games," he says. Both mediums, though, share a core creative drive: storytelling and immersive experience. Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he’d pursue games or movies. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and has loved both forms ever since.
"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 mission stays the same," he concludes.