You may recall that the Join Us trailer debuted during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a darkly humorous glimpse of a co‑op cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and conclude with a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the studio behind Join Us—was the infamous snake gun. "One of the developers’ kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a snake‑gun?’" Dietsch recounts. "We have a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build." 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 other players in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the team’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a surprisingly tiny staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "Everyone told us it was impossible to build something of this scope with just a dozen people. But we come from indie‑film backgrounds where we constantly punch above our weight," Abbott adds. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project the financial backing it needed.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch tinkering in Unreal Engine. "Unreal is free to download, and I’d been a gamer forever, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he had no formal game‑dev experience, he eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult simulation concept, merging his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed it to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, the studio that would later become part of Wolf Haus. 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, providing 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 roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I saw the demo Joe sent and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," he 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 a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing during an industry downturn. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially struggling to gain traction.
After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch, they secured a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where everyone’s voice matters," says Dietsch.
To make such a massive open‑world feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tools early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would sustain future projects. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development; we’re only now adding a modest project‑finance line for marketing," Wendschuh notes.
Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools rather than quick‑fix solutions. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Handing development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up in the morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the creative pipeline. Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in game creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
The team also shuns AI for voice work and art. The six‑kilometre map is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a decision Dietsch feels is crucial even for an indie title.
Dietsch highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring greenlights, casts, and crews. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a morning and viewed instantly in the engine, offering a thrilling feedback loop.
Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers; a small studio can release a successful title without A‑list talent. Both mediums, however, share a common creative drive: 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 whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story and engage an audience—that core impulse never changes."