You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June, where a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator was on full display. The clip showed robed cultists riding pigs, blasting away with machine guns, and finally cutting to a massive, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly explains was born from a child’s imagination. "One of our team member’s kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us crank out a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built a gun that literally fires snakes.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stuck around in the final game," Dietsch recalls. 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 friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small team to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums it up succinctly: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish game with just twelve people, and most people thought we were insane.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. “We come from indie film backgrounds, so we’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott says.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes 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 started by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine.
“Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a massive barrier to actually creating something,” he explains. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of grindhouse cinema with survival‑game mechanics. The proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising.
Dietsch says he pushed the prototype as far as he could before hitting a technical wall, then showed it to Abbott, who took the demo to Dooma for further development. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, came from a film‑writing career 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 company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was lured back by an old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, who sent him a video of Dietsch’s prototype. "It blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement," Wendschuh 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 Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—an uphill battle during a market downturn.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially without representation. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles, they relaunched their pitch in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a remarkably lean operation: just 13 full‑time staff members.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so everyone has a voice and touches the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight." The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment financed the entire development, essentially making the game self‑funded," Wendschuh notes. He adds that the investors’ equity stake aligns their interests with the studio’s long‑term value, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—the team’s answer is unequivocal: they don’t use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up each morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh concedes they have a few AI‑powered utilities for mundane tasks like calendar management, but none influence design, art, or narrative.
Krafton, which markets itself as an “AI‑first” company, actually discouraged the studio from employing generative AI in the creative pipeline. "Our investors wanted to be sure we weren’t relying on AI to make the game," Wendschuh explains, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which also denied using AI for core development.
The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the game’s scope. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices.
"That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie," Dietsch affirms. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring greenlights, casting, and massive budgets. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing instant iteration.
"You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says, describing the thrill of rapid feedback. Wendschuh points out that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with intense pre‑production and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By comparison, the barriers to entry for games are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to attract an audience.
"The gatekeepers are fewer, so the odds of a successful indie title are much higher," he argues. Both founders agree that the core creative drive is the same across mediums: storytelling and delivering an experience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds," Dietsch reflects. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story, engage the audience, and give them something memorable.
The tools change, but the intention stays the same."