Yeah, the Indiepocalypse.
The thing is, a lot of indie games... simply are not fun to play. And that's ok, it's hard to make a game which is fun to play. It's fine. [0]
You can treat indie games as a hobby, just have fun, call it 'starving art', whatever, but don't be shocked that people are not paying money.
On other hand, treat it like a business, with a solid product, market research, plenty of feedback from the outside (echo chamber is no good for a product that you are working on for years), marketing plan and some marketing budget. Even then, you have a chance of failure, where failure is that the revenue does not cover the costs. However, the odds are more in your favor.
These two extremely distinct segments (hobby v business) are both under the 'indie' label, however, their chances at succeeding are extremely different.
[0] I won't even talk about the platformers (there are dozens, if not hundreds, of them released every week) and they all are largely the same.
These metrics driven developers risk more cash up front and take less creative risks. Like a Hollywood movies, they pick a genre that is already successful and twist it a little. They likely even spend more on marketing than on production.
Still, even those games (like hollywood movies) remain hit driven so you'd better have a big budget backer to smooth out the edges.
These are all exceptions to the brutal world of indie game development.
Mostly, these developers don't make anything. They spend months and years in almost solitude making something no one will play. Games take a huge time investment to make before anyone is at all interested.
It's the starving artist profession of the nerd world.