The recent release of The Walking Dead: Survival Instincts got me thinking on why companies do this. First of all its a miss-use a major IP. Second, quick cash ins like this just result in poor sales and giant reputation sink for the developer who made them. Why do publishers keep on insisting on this practice? Would it kill them to take more time and thought to make a better game which will result in more sales and a better reputation for the said developer? I ask those who work in the game industry: Why? Why does this occur all the time?

Im asking why do they do this? They ruin the image of the major IP and their own rep. Is it a bad thing to make a great game that is actually worth buying? This isn't the 1980s and 1990s anymore. Word of mouth goes fast on the internet and people know what is crap and what is good

They ruin the image of the major IP and their own rep.

EA and Nintendo kind of disprove your premise.

I'd really say this applies to quite a lot of games. Metroid, Resident Evil, Sonic. How long have these games mostly sucked and still they keep coming. Honestly, making bad games has zero consequences. And making great games doesn't mean anything. Ask Looking Glass and Cavedog.

Because it is a business. That's what businesses do. That's also the difference between those companies and a group of people sitting down during their free time and making a game.

For those wanting to know what the OP is talking about - http://m.au.ign.com/articles/2013/03/22/the-walking-dead-survival-instinct-review

I don't know how this game was made specifically, but as a guess --

This is a work-for-hire game. The developer hasn't sat around dreaming about making the best TWD game and then gone out and done it (and messed it up)... They're just doing a job like the rest of us, and in the real world there's a lot of constraints that stop us from always doing the best work we can do.
Activision has been given the license to make a TWD FPS game, they would've had to outbid other publishers to get this contract. In turn, they then approach developers asking them to put forth a pitch at their own expense (which may include concept art, a 3d art prove, details of engine tech, gameplay overviews (not a detailed design), but most importantly a time/money budget). Activision will then consider all the pitches, looking to get the best value for money, within their own time/money budget.
They can't spend $100,000,000 on every game like they (literally) do with COD. Their other games probably have to make do with between 1% and 10% of that figure. Also, their contract with AMC may have time constraints on it, which forces them to publish their game within 'x' years, etc...
They won't choose a developer who's obviously not capable of delivering a shippable product, and the developer themselves obviously doesn't want to ship a half arsed attempt at a game. Activision would've picked a pitch that seemed of decent quality and achievable budget, and terminal would've genuinely tried to make a good game.
When you're working on a contract though, you don't have the option of simply saying it's not ready yet, and developing the game for another year to really flesh it out. You stop making the agreed upon progress, and your milestone cheques stop coming, and you go bankrupt. So if you get to the end of the project and it's rough around the edges, then too bad, to get paid you gotta start selling boxes. Activision also may also want to extend the project to make it really special, but they've internally got to budget their own money, and can't just pull another $10Mil out of their arse to keep it going another year. The best business decision may end up being to just ship a mediocre product.

yep.

game being sold = getting money;

game being made = costing money.

so, it is more about finding the 'sweet spot' where they get a reasonable number of sales while keeping costs under control.

even if the game isn't very good, it will still usually sell;

and, even if a game is better polished, it may not necessarily sell all that many more copies.

there are potentially a lot of factors here...

more so with the name of a relatively popular show behind it, they are likely selling more on the name of the show, rather than on the quality of the game.

the quality of the game may not necessarily help the show much, but the popularity of the show will potentially help the game sell more copies, so a lackluster game which is cheap to make may well earn a higher profits.

Products driven by marketing are usually pretty bad.

It's really rare to see a good game that's tied to some external IP because if you have a good game there's no reason to strap some other IP onto it in order to make sales.

The only exception I can think of right now is 'Magical Quest: Starring Mickey Mouse' for the SNES. That game was awesome, probably because it was made by Capcom during the MegaMan X era.

Money