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, fire machine guns, and eventually confront towering, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky element that didn’t make the final cut of the teaser was the infamous snake gun, a feature that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—attributes to a spontaneous suggestion from a team member’s child. “His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within about thirty minutes I built a weapon that actually shoots snakes.
He was thrilled, and we kept it in the game,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. More importantly, it 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 staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence wasn’t unfounded.
Many of the founders came from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch modest budgets into impressive productions. “We’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott said.
After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor 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 originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials,” he explains. Though he had no formal training, he managed to produce a few small games before deciding to tackle something larger—a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, hit a technical wall, and showed the demo to Abbott, who then introduced 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 games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back: “Joe showed me a demo of his game, and it blew my mind.
I couldn’t stay retired.” Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer, respectively.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding, which proved difficult amid an industry downturn in the summer of 2023. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA in Los Angeles, re‑pitched in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Abbott believes the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—was instrumental, as were the veteran gamers on the advisory board. “Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for twelve years in the gaming world and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh notes.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its creation: just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the group small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where “everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a specific group of people.” To achieve such ambition with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. “We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development, therefore, was split between ideation and constructing the very tools that would later enable the game’s expansion.
The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital was used to self‑finance the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. “Equity investors want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos,” says Wendschuh.
“Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it lets a tiny team deliver a game of this magnitude.” Despite the industry’s growing reliance on generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it in the creative process. “We don’t use generative AI for any part of game creation,” Dietsch states.
“We believe a human touch is essential. The only AI we employ is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email replies.” Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI for artistic work, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not AI‑generated voices.
“That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie,” Wendschuh affirms. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine. “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into Unreal, and see it instantly,” he says, describing the exhilarating feedback loop that keeps the team motivated. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set after months of pre‑production.
While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. “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 recalls. “I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both.
Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience, tell a story, and create an experience. The tools change, but the goal stays the same.”