I know Assembly now has the reputation of primarily being a gaming party, but the only games I've ever seen at other demoparties have been compo entries for oldschool hardware.
It's not correct. Half the room is dedicated to demo scene and gaming is not tolerated. Assembly itself is many things now, with world class eSports arena, sales fair, boothbabes, demo scene arena, temporary TV broadcast studio and so on.
For other demo parties, smaller demo parties there is no gaming and the experience is exactly the same as it was back in the early 90s.