alt Hacker NewsHistoric bit: in the late 90s/early 2000s there was a bit of a trend - and quite some tension - of demoscene parties getting taken over by LAN parties. I believe the Gathering used to be a demoscene party, but completely transformed into a gaming LAN party.
There were also those that tried to be both (I believe Assembly is doing both to this day) or those that kept the gaming out (Mekka/Symposium, which no longer exists, but there's been a followup party called Breakpoint, and later another followup called Revision that still exists).
The Gathering used to be a demoscene event! Even hosted the scene.org awards in 2011. Looking at pouet.net, quite a lot of famous demos were released there, such as:
* desert dream by kefrens in 1993
* tint by TBL(!) in 1996
* rupture by ASD in 2009
* numb res by carillon & cyberiad and fairlight
Here is a TV report from the first event in 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SACVynerMhA
Also shoutout to ODD's world domination, which is somewhat of a meme in the Norwegian demoscene community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgnBi6PuA5M
Today, the demoscene still lives in Norway albeit arguably on life support. Those that are still interested usually go to "proper demoparties". Solskogen, the old demoparty, had its last event during COVID. Black Valley is a replacement and it seems to be doing well. I was at Solskogen '17 and it was a great collection of hacker-minded people. There was also plenty of alcohol, I can understand why demosceners - an aging population, would prefer their own party to the alcohol-free The Gathering.
The Gathering currently has a mix of creative and e-sport events. I feel like the end of creative has loomed over our heads for 10 years, at least we definitely felt like a minority when I was crew back in the first half of the 2010s. But it still lives, and people still participate in the competitions!