As far as I understood, they relied on the source material and the actors, who used the source material to develop their characters. It all went to shyt when they ran out of source material and the actors had to work with the material given to them by the showrunners.
To me it sounded like they should have hired some quality writers as soon as they reached the end of the books, because the drop in quality was incredible. The whole of season 7 felt off, as if it was a different show than what it was before.
And season 8 made it obvious that they didn't really understand the story or the characters they were working with. They thought their show was about the spectacle and the battles, when in reality it was about the development and story archs of complex characters and complex politics. That's why the last season felt like a double digit sequel of an action franchise, where the plot serves mainly as a pretext to bring a bunch of characters from previous movies together and show a lot of explosions.
Hiring quality writers would have also reduced the burden of running the show, which means they could have taken more time to wrap things up over the course of two more full length seasons.
I think these guys will end up like the wachowski brothers, who landed a surprise hit with the matrix and haven't produced anything worth watching ever since. You could even argue that season 7 and 8 are to game of thrones what the sequels were to the first matrix movie.
It should be negs on sight for the lames that defend shyt writing.
