You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the finale hints at colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What didn’t make the cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that launches snakes.
The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the final build," Dietsch recounts. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger team. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told ourselves we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people.
Everyone else thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to stretch modest budgets into impressive results. "We come from the indie film world and are used to punching well above our weight," Abbott notes. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
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 is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating one," he explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that married his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall soon. When he showed it to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter 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 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.
"I was looking at a game Joe had made, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then brought in Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio pitched repeatedly, eventually enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to help. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Wolf Haus deliberately kept the studio lean—13 full‑time staff at the time of writing. "We wanted a small‑team culture where everyone has a voice and touches the creative process," Dietsch says. To make a large‑scale open world feasible with such a headcount, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike invested directly into the studio, so the game is essentially self‑funded. We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the development costs have been covered by our investors," Wendschuh notes.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even when it slows short‑term progress. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up every morning," Dietsch says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a tiny indie, we felt it was essential to preserve that human element," Dietsch emphasizes. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to reach the set, requiring approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
In games, an idea can be prototyped in a morning, placed into the engine, and instantly tested. This immediacy, he says, fuels his excitement. Wendschuh points out that movies are front‑loaded with intense, costly pre‑production phases, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, it rarely succeeds.
By contrast, a small team can release a successful game without A‑list actors or directors," he explains. Both founders agree that storytelling is the core driver, regardless of medium. "When I was six, I wanted to make movies or games.
It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both paths have always felt natural.
Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience," Dietsch concludes.