Without Mathematics, There May Never Be Another Minecraft
When many players think of video games, the first things that come to mind are graphics, characters, storylines, servers, or an addictive gameplay loop. Yet, before any of these elements can truly function, there is a deeper, more easily overlooked foundation: mathematics.
This is not just an empty slogan. According to data from the UK trade body Ukie, the UK gaming market reached a value of £8.76 billion in 2025, a 7.4% year-on-year increase, with the industry supporting over 73,000 jobs. In other words, gaming is no longer a fringe form of entertainment; it is a mature industry where technology, creativity, and economic value are deeply intertwined.
The problem is that the foundational capabilities supporting this industry are being underestimated by some. In recent years, several UK universities have faced budget pressures, leading to adjustments in mathematics departments and courses. The decision by the University of Dundee to pause its undergraduate mathematics admissions has been particularly controversial, as Dundee is not just a typical university city—it is a symbolic location on the map of the UK gaming industry.
When mentioning Dundee, it is difficult to overlook 4J Studios. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Scotland, 4J Studios is widely known for developing the console versions of Minecraft. For many players, the Minecraft experience on platforms such as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch was brought into their living rooms and onto their handheld screens precisely through the work of 4J Studios.
Minecraft may appear to be built from blocks, with rules that are intuitive enough: mine, craft, build, and survive. But what truly makes it an explorable, destructible, procedurally generated, and multiplayer sandbox world is the underlying geometry, matrices, vectors, algorithms, network synchronization, and spatial computing. While players see grass blocks, redstone, and mine shafts, developers are dealing with coordinates, collisions, lighting, performance, and countless real-time computational problems.
The same applies to more complex AAA games. Vehicle movement in open worlds, character animations, weather systems, fluid dynamics, shadow transitions, physical collisions, and pathfinding—almost every single element relies on mathematics. The more natural the graphics and the more expansive the world, the less the player notices the "calculations" at work, which is a testament to the robustness of the underlying technology.
Therefore, weakening mathematics education is not merely an internal academic adjustment for universities. It affects the talent pipeline for game development and impacts broader technical fields such as artificial intelligence, medical simulation, defense, engineering, and data analysis. Many mathematical methods applied in games today were not originally created for gaming; they often originated from pure theoretical research conducted decades ago or even earlier, only later finding immense value in computer graphics, simulation training, and interactive entertainment.
The University of Dundee has emphasized that mathematics will not disappear entirely but will continue to exist as a support for other disciplines. However, this is precisely where the controversy lies: if mathematics is treated solely as an "auxiliary tool," the depth of the discipline, the research environment, and the talent cultivation chain may be compromised. In the short term, this might alleviate financial pressure; in the long term, it could cause a city that prides itself on its gaming industry to lose its most critical foundational capability.
The gaming industry is often misunderstood as requiring only creativity and art. In reality, truly excellent games are the result of art, engineering, and mathematics working in concert. Without a programmer's mastery of space and logic, the best world-building concepts would remain trapped in concept art; without the mathematical support for physics, rendering, and systems, even the grandest open world would struggle to run stably.
Thus, the message "Without mathematics, there is no next Minecraft" is not meant to suggest that every player must study advanced mathematics. Rather, it is a reminder that policymakers, university administrators, and industry observers need to re-evaluate the value of games. They are not cheap pastimes, but a concentrated display of modern technical capability.
If the UK wishes to maintain its position in game development, creative technology, and the digital industry, it cannot simply celebrate after a project succeeds; it must also protect the seemingly dry foundational disciplines that determine the ceiling of what is possible before that success is achieved. The next great sandbox world may still be hidden in the mind of a student. And what makes it truly possible to build will, in all likelihood, still be mathematics.
