The teaser for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the trailer, robed followers ride on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacle monster looming on the horizon. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly recounts. "A teammate’s kid asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon survived into the final build," Dietsch explains. That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a visually impressive title to emerge from a remarkably small development crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors.
The industry tells you you need a hundred‑person team to build a high‑fidelity world, but we believed twelve could do the job." Skeptics laughed, but the Wolf Haus veterans drew confidence from their indie‑film backgrounds, where limited budgets often force teams to punch far above their weight. After a grueling 80‑pitch marathon, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the company. The founders’ Hollywood credentials run 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 renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx, giving the team a solid grounding in narrative‑driven storytelling. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials," he says.
Though he had never built a commercial game before, he quickly produced a few small prototypes. The concept that stuck was a doomsday cult simulator that married survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a hybrid that could serve as a single intellectual property spanning both games and potential film adaptations. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had transitioned from film production and screenwriting to video‑game writing in the early 2000s, contributing scripts for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his firm Sekretagent Productions. Later, Wendschuh founded 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, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development.
"I was ready for a quiet life, but when Joe showed me his prototype, I was blown away and decided to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recalls. He then brought on Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the makers of Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor.
Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team solidified, the next hurdle was financing—particularly challenging amid an industry downturn that began in 2023.
Initial pitches generated enthusiasm for the concept but failed to secure capital. The studio eventually enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped re‑pitch the project throughout 2024. Their efforts paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the cash needed to continue development. Abbott notes that CAA’s representation, which also covers titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of seasoned industry veterans were instrumental in convincing investors.
"Our agent Derek Douglas had been my representative during my twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," says Wendschuh. Despite the heavyweight backing, the studio remains lean: only thirteen full‑time staff members work on Join Us. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional, fostering a collaborative environment where every voice influences creative direction. To make a sprawling open‑world game feasible with such a limited headcount, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the underlying toolset that would keep the project from collapsing under its own complexity.
The equity‑funded model gave the team the breathing room to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investments are used to finance the game itself, making it essentially self‑funded," Wendschuh says. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to continue building reusable tools even if they slow immediate progress.
When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: they do not employ AI for any creative tasks. "Our philosophy is that a game should retain a human touch. Using AI to generate content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton, which publicly positions itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The 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 rather than synthetic voices. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was essential to preserve that human element," says Dietsch.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and interactive media. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly experienced.
This immediacy fuels his enthusiasm for game development. Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is heavily front‑loaded with expensive set‑ups and star power, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers, allowing smaller teams to achieve success without A‑list names. Both veterans conclude that, regardless of medium, the core mission remains the same: to craft an experience that tells a story, engages an audience, and leaves a lasting impression.
Whether through a camera lens or a game engine, the goal is to transport people into a world of your own creation, and that timeless creative impulse continues to drive Wolf Haus as they bring Join Us to life.