Indie games itself are a lottery. Either you get on HIB, Steam, Xbox Arcade, get featured by Apple or you die silently.

Gaming is a market where you as an indie have to hit the jackpot or you have to somehow face your competition, which are multi billion corporations like EA and Activison, and beat them at their game.

From all the indie gamedevs I only know 2 that really made it (in the sense that they created a sustainable business): Jeff Vogel with his RPGs and the guy from "Gratuitous Space Battles". (I'm not yet sure about the Minecraft guy.)

All the other success stories are like a burning sheet of paper. They burn bright but they burn fast. And then there are the other 99.99% of indie gamedevs who will never succeed in any sense with their games. Not because their games are bad - but because the market they compete in is a slaughterhouse.