The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
“My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. He was blown away, and we kept it in the game,” Dietsch recounts. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult, where players can recruit AI followers or invite friends to join their cause.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale project to be built by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up: “We wanted to be disruptors.
Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t produce a game of this scope, but we proved them wrong.” The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve cinematic ambitions on modest budgets. “We come from indie film circles and are accustomed to punching far above our weight,” Abbott explains. After eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the runway needed to bring Join Us to life. Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood heritage.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio 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 Star Citizen venture. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine, drawn by its free download and the perception that the barrier to entry for game creation had lowered dramatically. “I’d loved games for years, but building one felt out of reach.
I downloaded Unreal, followed YouTube tutorials, and started tinkering,” he says. After a few modest prototypes, he returned to a long‑standing fascination: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept was handed off to Dooma for further development. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing for 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 company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After buying a remote Canadian island restaurant and planning a quiet retirement, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development.
Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Ubisoft veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a challenge amplified by an industry downturn in 2023. Initial pitches generated interest but not commitment.
After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus secured seed funding from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product.” To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the internal tools that would keep the open‑world map from collapsing under its own weight.
The equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the bulk of development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven creation: “Our investors want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they support our extensive tool‑building. It may slow us down, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this magnitude.” When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games,” he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI services they employ are mundane productivity tools for calendar management and email drafting.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometer‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
Dietsch notes that preserving this level of artisanal detail was crucial, even for an indie‑scale project. Comparing film and game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring greenlights, casting, and massive logistical coordination. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with gatekeepers such as A‑list directors and actors determining a project’s fate. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can ship a successful product without celebrity endorsements. Both mediums, though, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experience.
Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he’d pursue movies or games. “I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both have always been part of me. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The tools differ, but the goal is the same."