The trailer for Join Us first appeared at the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, fire machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a child’s imagination. “One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooter look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a gun that actually launches snakes.
He was blown away, and we kept it in the final build,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us aims to deliver. Set in an open‑world survival environment, players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑styled cult. The game’s design philosophy also reflects Wolf Haus’s tech‑first mindset, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would traditionally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s COO, explains the team’s disruptive ambition: “We told everyone we could pull off a AAA‑level project with just twelve people. Most people laughed, thinking it was impossible.” The founders’ confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. Abbott notes, “We come from indie film backgrounds, so we’re used to punching far above our weight.” After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes 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, the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen, and later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us traces back to Dietsch tinkering with Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download and started learning from YouTube tutorials,” he says.
Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. The core idea—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—merged his passions for movies and games into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, Wendschuh founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for 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, pulled him back.
“I saw the demo Joe sent, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement,” he says. He then 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 chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing—especially challenging during the industry downturn of 2023. The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024.
Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the fundraising path. “My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me during my twelve years in games, helped a lot,” he notes.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team approach preserves a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters and each person can touch both creative and technical aspects. To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling early on. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains.
“We built a robust toolkit so that as features spread across the open world, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight.” The funding structure also supports this tool‑heavy methodology. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment has essentially self‑funded the game’s development, allowing the team to focus on building the necessary infrastructure without external pressure. “Equity partners are incentivized to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they encourage us to invest in tools,” says Wendschuh. “When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a tool to address it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to achieve something massive.” 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.
Using an AI to generate core content would defeat why we love making games,” he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
“That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie,” says Dietsch. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In game development, an idea can be prototyped the same day, placed in the engine, and instantly experienced.
“That immediacy is exhilarating,” he notes. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set work and a reliance on a few high‑profile talent to secure financing.
While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power is rare. By contrast, the low barrier to entry in games means a small, talented team can reach a wide audience without A‑list names.
Both mediums, however, share a core creative drive: storytelling and immersive experience. Dietsch’s childhood wish to make either movies or games boiled down to a coin toss and a camera under the tree at Christmas.
He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending technical skill with artistic ambition. “Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them.
The tools change, but the goal stays the same.”