The sad fact of the matter is that "being successful" goes beyond making a good product. A team/person can create a phenomenal indie game but if they don't have the proper skills/hookups to market the product where people can find them they're dead in the water. Others that build a worse product but are able to get it out there will win. Apple has shown how marketing can be greater than engineering in many regards.

It sounds like people want to blame bundle providers for picking some over the others but how is that their fault? If the humble bundle crew finds a set of excellent games (I've yet to be disappointed by their packs) who are we to ridicule if their selections neglected other good games? I'm sorry but that's life in competition.

A big part of this too is that there's boatloads of indie games out there. But there's only a small dingy of good ones. Everything believes that their game is worthy of the throne but very few are as developers often view their work through rose tinted monitors.

Life is what life is: some win and some lose. There is no entitlement here where hard work guarantees a reward; there is no 1:1 relationship like in the games people are making.

Personally though? I feel that if bundles weren't to exist then even fewer indie games would receive recognition than we have now. Out of the 5 indie packs I've purchased I had only previously owned 3 of the games (So that's about a 3/20 ratio give or take). I'll take our current system over the alternative.