The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes when it appeared in the Xbox Showcase back in June, presenting a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and conclude with a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming over the horizon. One of the more memorable, if not entirely shown, moments was the inclusion of a "snake gun"—a weapon that literally fires serpents. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains that the idea came from a team member’s child, who asked, "Can there be a snake gun?" Thanks to a flexible in‑house toolset, Dietsch was able to prototype the weapon in roughly thirty minutes, a feat that delighted the youngster and secured the feature’s place in the final build.
That anecdote captures the spirit of the gameplay in Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience that lets players recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed.
But we’ve proven them wrong." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where working with limited budgets is the norm. "We come from indie films and we’re used to punching well above our weight," Abbott notes. After an arduous 80‑pitch marathon, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood history.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two co‑wrote and co‑directed the movies Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he recalls. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest games, and eventually returned to a lingering fascination: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, hit a few technical walls, and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into video games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After the sale, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a phone call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development when he was shown Dietsch’s demo and was instantly impressed. Wendschuh then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic, the creators of Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider came aboard as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a challenge amplified by a broader industry downturn that began in 2023. The studio’s first pitches in the summer of 2023 met with polite interest but little commitment.
"People liked what we were doing, but the market was tough," Dietsch says. The team enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, refined their pitch deck, and returned to investors in 2024.
Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton led a seed round that finally gave the project the runway it needed. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors. "My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me during my twelve years in games, was instrumental.
He’d been head of the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. Despite the pedigree, Join Us is being built by a remarkably lean crew—thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the game." To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a tiny team, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The studio spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and constructing the internal toolset that would allow those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own complexity.
This tool‑first approach also serves future projects, giving the team a reusable foundation. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investments fund the development directly, making the game essentially self‑funded," says Wendschuh. While a modest amount of project finance is being allocated for marketing, the core development costs have been covered by the equity partners.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued building of in‑house tools even if it slows short‑term progress. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up every morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic or design decisions. Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged Wolf Haus from integrating generative AI into the creative pipeline.
This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. Both studios emphasize the preservation of human‑crafted content, especially for voice work and art.
Indeed, every element of Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square world is handcrafted, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—a point of pride for a studio of this size. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game creation.
In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring layers of approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before a studio greenlights production. In games, however, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly tested in the engine, offering a sense of immediacy that he finds exhilarating.
Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work, games allow for more iterative development without the same gatekeeping constraints. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says. Both creators agree that the core impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch recalls his childhood fascination with both cameras and computers, learning to program on a TI‑83 calculator.
Whether through cinema or interactive entertainment, the goal is to engage audiences, and that creative drive continues to guide Wolf Haus as they bring Join Us to life.