While I still lived in Los Angeles, I worked crazy hours and never saw a single episode. Now that I'm in the Philippines, we don't have HBO. I bought the first book, but couldn't get into it. Thus, I have only the vaguest idea of what GoT is about.
It's set in a pseudo-Middle-Ages. Although it purports to be a fantasy, there is little to no magic, albeit there is a dragon. This is more a story of Byzantine intrigue, lust, and bloodletting...Yes?
In your opinion, why is GoT so popular?
When I was first describing the computer game I'm basing my current very long fanfic project on (Kingmaker: Rise to the Throne),
@MaryKB mentioned that it sounded somewhat like Game of Thrones (game takes place in the 11th century, there are several long-term plots and intrigue going on, the king is murdered and his long-lost heir must be found; of course the heir himself has no idea that he's the heir, and at some point in the distant past there were griffins involved in some struggle).
I've never seen a single minute of Game of Thrones, and after Mary's question, I resolved to never watch it. If she made that connection, other people might as well, and I don't want my story to be influenced by a book/TV series known to millions of people. I'm extrapolating from the source material, introducing new characters, places, situations, and figuring out how to explain the element of magic that the developers tossed into the storyline near the end, and would prefer to keep that part of it as much my own creative input as possible.
That said, some of the things I am using for inspiration have more to do with the courts of King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, with a dollop of Arthurian stuff (there's a reference in the game to a sword in a stone, but the sword has to be put back into the stone, instead of being drawn out), and I'll admit to also being influenced by my 12 years of being active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. My main character, a 30-year-old man born in the year 1009 AD, is going to be sufficiently enlightened that he doesn't see anything wrong with women learning to read, and even considers doing something about the inheritance laws. He's not going to be enlightened as far as all 21st-century sensibilities go, however. Arranged marriage is still a thing in Griffinvale, as is the feudal system.
So even though my cable company keeps offering the first season or two of GoT for free (with the idea that people will get hooked and then sign up for an expensive channel bundle so they can watch the rest of it), I have never taken advantage of it. I don't want the temptation in case I'd like it, and then I'd have a hard time not being influenced by it.
Byzantine intrigue, lust, and bloodletting more than anything? Absolutely.
Why it is so popular? Marketing, pure and simple, IMO. Epic, psuedo-Middle Ages fantasy with or without magic and/or dragons is far from hard to come by, and a whole lot of it I think is better than GoT. Every book started more plot lines that "ended in cliffhangers" (more like were left unresolved and quite possibly forgotten) than were wrapped up, so every book was met as "eagerly awaited answers" about something. Even though in many cases the 'answer' would be partial at best and the can kicked down the road to the inevitable next volume. By about volume six it was taking five or six hundred pages just to acknowledge all the unresolved plot lines in a cursory fashion and kick them on to the next volume, turning it into an endless money mill. Hardly anyone that far in was capable of saying "screw this" and admitting they had been sucked along for several thousands of pages with no end in sight, ever, so they just keep buying them...and talking them up so they don't get asked why they bother.
Cliffhangers and unresolved plotlines drive me nuts if they're not sufficiently explained. One of the reasons I write fanfic is to resolve these things for myself. In the Kingmaker game, the developers neglected to include a scene where the heir is actually told he's the heir. There's a scene he's in where his companions talk about the necessity of finding proof of his lineage, and I wondered why this character didn't chime in with "wait a minute... why do I need to prove my lineage to anyone, what are you talking about?" Instead, the developers just have him go along with what the other characters are saying and not questioning anything.
Personally, if someone told me I had to prove my lineage as part of making sure the king's murderers didn't get away with it, I'd want to know why.
So I'm in the midst of writing that scene that should have been in the game but wasn't. There's even going to be some question of whether or not the heir actually
wants to be the heir. Not everyone jumps at the chance to be the king when it's offered and they have a legitimate claim.
If anything I mention about my story (in the Watcha Writin'? thread or any NaNoWriMo threads) is similar to anything in GoT, I don't want to know about it. If I duplicate anything, I want it to be accidental, not intentional.
Cynical and enlightening. 
