SAN FRANCISCO—Though the frequently stated theme of this year's Intel Developer Forum (IDF) here is "What Will You Develop?", a more prominent one is "the past versus the future."

Though you may not expect that concept to play a strong role when it comes to gaming, it wasn't just implied at an afternoon "Game Changer" session; it was on the stage in plain sight.

A significant number of the case mods on display had a distinctly retro feel. One featured an Intel Core i7 processor built into an actual Atari 800XL computer (circa 1984). Another bore a stunning resemblance to a light cycle from the 1982 movie Tron. Still another bore a side panel emblazoned with what looked like a wall hanging of a "Home Sweet Home" sampler from the Victorian era. And playtime in its myriad forms was celebrated with mods as diverse as a pile of Lego bricks (first manufactured in 1949) and Fallout (1997, but referring to the mid 1950s).

As it turned out, perhaps expectedly, all this eventually served as background for a wide-ranging look at where gaming is going and (of course) how Intel plans on getting us all there. Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Client Computing Group, and Doug Fisher, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, joined forces for a fascinating, often funny, and energetic presentation of how hardware and software are coming together to give us the gaming experiences of tomorrow.

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First, they assured us, gaming, especially of the PC or otherwise high-tech variety, is in terrific shape. And some of the numbers they quoted sounded more like government rounding errors, given their size. Gaming will generate $92 billion in revenue in 2015, Skaugen said, with $34 billion of it spent on PC games and the number rising to $45 billion if you also include mobile or Internet of Things (IoT) devices. There are about 1.8 billion gamers in the world, of which 1.2 billion are PC gamers; of those, 711 million are "active" (meaning they pay for at least one game a month).

To further explore those statistics, Fisher tackled a few "myths" that have dogged gaming for a long time. It's not merely a teenager's pastime; the average age of an American gamer today is 35. Of the 711 million people who consider themselves active gamers, about 341.3 million of them (48 percent), are women. Gaming isn't just a hobby: It's growing every year as a professional pursuit (more on that later), and games also have important applications in education, mental stimulation, and simulation purposes. ("If your doctor or surgeon games for at least 3 hours a week," Fisher said, "they make 37 percent fewer errors in surgery, and they operate 27 percent faster.") And, perhaps most surprisingly, gaming has moved beyond merely, well, gamers: There's also a global audience of more than 205 million people who like watching others game, in 180 countries.

Assuming the accuracy of those numbers, one can't blame Intel for seriously stressing compatibility ("We are absolutely about cross-device and cross-operating system," Skaugen said) and performance; why wouldn't any company in the hardware and software business want to engage as much of that enormous potential audience as possible? The duo thinks Intel is well in line with that, delivering "up to 100 percent better graphics performance" with the new Iris graphics system, which "can now outperform more than 80 percent" of discrete graphics solutions in the world. It's now found in laptops, with Optane-based products planned that will turn out "five to seven times" the performance and speed of current solid-state drives (SSDs) when they're released in several months.

Also central: the new sixth-generation Core (aka "Skylake") processor family. Its high-end gaming member, the Core i7-6700K, has already been released, and is currently setting new overclocking world records; one enterprising tweaker has already taken it to just barely shy of 7GHz—6,998.88MHz, to be exact, and no, those are not typos. (A pair of Intel's own in-house gurus came out to give their own overclocking demonstration, which involved a whole lot of liquid nitrogen.) And when mobile Skylake hits soon, one of its chips will include an unlocked multiplier, brand-new territory for Intel, so anyone can overclock with relative ease (and competent cooling). Expect to see this processor in laptops from EVGA (typically a component manufacturer) and MSI, among others, before too long.

Beyond these mere hardware concerns, however, Skaugen and Fisher wanted to point out that Intel is just as interested in changing how the games are played. Intel's RealSense cameras make it possible to scan a player and put his or her face on the game's lead character, making for the most personalized play possible. (This technique, we were told, is already being used, but will only expand in the months to come.) Another application of this was introduced by David Graham, marketing director for Lego: By using a RealSense-equipped phone, you could scan all the objects on a table to create a Lego landscape that you can then walk around in as a Lego person, yellow skin and all.

Chris Roberts, designer of the groundbreaking Wing Commander series of the mid 1990s, appeared to discuss his upcoming game Star Citizen, which he wants to have a "full, seamless universe that people can fly around in, [but] one of our big challenges is, how do we deal with all that data? Being able to stream it in and out is important," and the power of Optane and Skylake could make it a reality.

David Kaemmer, the CEO of iRacing, said he thought Intel technologies could be used to expand the immersive nature of the types of games he loves to create, and help real-world racers expand their audiences ("They're really becoming aware that gaming is a hugely growing and key way for them to reach their fan base," Kaemmer said).

Skaugen and Fisher didn't want all the focus to be on the people behind the scenes; he wanted to give real gamers their say, too. Out came CLG Red, an all-women professional gaming group from CounterLogic Gaming. The award-winning team (six World Championship titles, first at the Arbalet cup, and more) discussed how they practice three hours a night, for five days a week, and how they see money and sponsorships changing e-sports. They then played an early demo of Just Cause 3 (slated for release December 1), which was being run on three 4K monitors by a Skylake desktop chip.

The emergence of 4K, Skaugen said, is one of the four major trends influencing the gaming industry. The others include gaming on the go, gaming and IoT ("It's gonna be huge," Skaugen marveled), and virtual reality, all of which Intel sees as fusing its innovations in more and more new ways in the years to come.

Intel wants to lead the way with its new gaming ecosystem, Achievement Unlocked (announced earlier this year), which the company describes as "a coordinated, impactful, worldwide effort to help game developers be even more successful at creating great games using Intel platforms and technology." The initiative also just announced its first Game of the Year award winner: The Franz Kafka Videogame, a "puzzle adventure" by Dennis Galanin based on the writings, well, of Franz Kafka.

Galanin wasn't on hand to accept his award, so Skaugen decided to stand in and deliver an acceptance speech: "I'd like to thank my mother, my motherboard..." And that's when the chorus of boos hit. Perhaps those in attendance were happy a few minutes later when Skaugen and Fisher sat down to challenge CLG Red to a game of Counter-Strike, and promptly got schooled in its finer nuances. Intel may acknowledge and respect the past as it moves forward, but people in general are less forgiving of bad puns, a style of comedy they consider older (and less funny) than the hills.