The problem is - there are literally thousands of indie devs that don't make the cut. The days of Mojang or Fez are long over, the novelty of the indie dev has worn off, unfortunately.
Yeah, I mean, for every indie dev who's successful enough to make a career out of it, there'll be countless others who try and fail. But it's still technically possible to break through, in the sense that you don't need a huge team or tons of resources to make a hit game. (And having a huge team and tons of resources isn't a guarantee of success, either :P)
True. There is always the chance that you get lucky - case in point, Minecraft. If you read the old devlogs when Notch first started to develop the game, it's really interesting how quickly it started to generate genuine interest, if only among other indie game devs at first who frequented the same forum. But that's a one in a million strike of luck - hitting on a fresh idea and being able to implement it in a way that appeals to a sufficent market.
Like you say, just from raw statistics, if you're an indie dev, most likely you're going to fail.
Also, if you go back in time, Minecraft wasn't even the only "Lego/block building game" of the era. Blockland is 7 years earlier.
The sad dirty secret is that wild success depends on so many factors out of your control that the best you can do for is aim for mild success and hope lightning strikes (while avoiding as many things that could ground out lightning, I guess).
In a way, it's the difference between a lifestyle business and a startup.
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