There will be no more games like Minecraft without maths

The writer is chair of 4J Studios, a video games developer

A somewhat disdainful attitude towards the video games industry pervades the UK. This is despite the fact it is worth billions and recognised around the world. Industry body UK Interactive Entertainment put the sector’s value at £8.76bn last year, supporting more than 73,000 jobs. Others think that’s a conservative estimate.

Now failure to understand our industry, and the particular skills it’s built on, threatens to hamper progress or even reverse it.

It is alarming to see mathematics departments under threat at universities across the UK. From Exeter to Aberdeen — almost literally the length of the country — universities are making swingeing budget cuts and maths is often in the line of fire.

Gamers around the globe started pre-ordering Grand Theft Auto VI last week in record numbers. It’s the most highly anticipated entertainment release in history, given the 13-year gap since the last instalment emerged from developer Rockstar’s Edinburgh base. My company, 4J Studios, based in Dundee, brought Minecraft to consoles, helping it become the best-selling video game in history.

But there would be no Minecraft without maths. And gamers would be waiting much longer for GTA without the world-leading mathematical sciences that are vital to bringing it to life.

For worlds that are truly immersive, with realistic movement, light and shadows, and for gameplay that is engaging and fun, you need a range of mathematical skills and principles: geometry, network theory, fluid dynamics, matrices and vector calculus among them.

Every game is a combination of a vast array of talents. But underpinning it all are so many facets of the mathematical sciences.

Maths courses are relatively low-cost for universities to deliver yet can yield huge returns. And not just from money-spinning applications, welcome though they are. Much of the maths that goes into games started as blue-sky thinking, with roots going back decades or even centuries — long before the advent of computers, never mind consoles and video games. Yet the concepts now fuel a multibillion-pound industry and support jobs, taxes and economic value.

Plans to pause recruitment to the University of Dundee’s maths degree are particularly dismaying. Dundee can stake a claim to being the birthplace of the UK’s gaming industry — that’s why my company is headquartered there. GTA was also first developed there.

A city that claims to be a centre of excellence in gaming must have maths capacity to support it. Yet those students enrolling in maths at the university later this year could be the last, bringing an end to more than a century of maths teaching here. The university says maths will still be taught but with “a stronger emphasis on its role as an enabling discipline supporting other subject areas”. This smacks of short-sightedness at best and stupidity at worst.

The worlds our video games developers dream up and develop are wonderful, popular and, at their best, speak to the human condition. Yet they pale next to the splendour, the breadth and depth of the mathematical sciences, which plays a crucial role across society, security, innovation, defence and healthcare — almost every aspect of our lives. And innovation that started in video games can be found in the same places. For example, technologies that rely on maths render realistic but imaginary worlds that are also used to train surgeons.

Bit by bit, we are seeing our national maths capacity chipped away. That may fatally undermine our video games industry — a UK success story. We need government to take a wider view, to ensure the nation retains a sovereign ecosystem in the mathematical sciences. And we need university administrators to recognise the role and value of maths and protect it.