The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky element that didn’t make the final cut of the teaser was the "snake gun," a weapon that shoots serpents.
According to Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑firing gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a functional snake gun. The kid was thrilled, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a visually rich, large‑scale experience to be assembled by a surprisingly small team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition succinctly: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do it.’ Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results with modest budgets. Many of the founders cut their teeth on independent film productions, learning how to stretch limited resources to maximum effect.
The studio endured 80 pitch meetings before finally securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founder of Wolf Haus.
Together they 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 he moved on to the space‑sim Star Citizen.
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.
Although he had never built a game before, he managed to release a couple of small titles before deciding to tackle something larger. The concept of a doomsday cult simulator appealed to him because it fused his love of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and the storytelling possibilities of both film and games into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, expecting it to hit a technical wall quickly. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a partner that would later help secure funding.
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. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work 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 selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life.
That plan was interrupted when his old Hollywood‑hillroommate, Michael Abbott, called and said a friend had made a video game. Curious, Wendschuh watched Dietsch’s demo, was “blown away,” and decided to come out of retirement to help. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. Despite the market’s gloom, the game’s unique premise attracted interest. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped refine their pitch strategy and secure 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 industry veterans as critical to closing the deal.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it is being built: a full‑scale, high‑fidelity open‑world game developed by only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team entered the project with a clear understanding of its scope and a desire to keep the studio intimate, ensuring that “everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative side, and it feels like a game made by a specific group of people.” To make such an ambitious vision feasible with a tiny crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from the outset.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch notes. The studio built a robust toolkit that allowed features to expand across the massive open world without causing the project to collapse under its own weight. In practice, the first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would later enable rapid iteration. The funding model gave the team the breathing room needed to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was used to self‑fund the entire development process, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This equity‑first approach aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of reusable tools even when they temporarily slow down feature implementation.
When asked about generative AI, a hot topic in modern game development, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential. Turning the creative process over to an AI would defeat why we get up in the morning,” he says. Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for art, design, or narrative.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the game’s creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. Dietsch stresses that preserving this level of human involvement was a core principle, even for an indie‑sized project.
Reflecting on the differences between film and games, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of interactive media. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized.
Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, often dependent on securing a handful of high‑profile talent to green‑light a project. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, the odds of success without marquee names or distribution are slim.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without needing A‑list actors or directors. Both founders agree that the underlying creative drive is the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Dietsch’s childhood ambition—to make either games or movies—ultimately hinged on a coin toss and a Christmas camera. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, and that early fascination has guided his career ever since.
Whether through film or interactive entertainment, the goal remains to immerse people in a narrative world, and Join Us represents the latest manifestation of that lifelong passion.