Hey, [insert profitable indie developer here] made TONS of money, let's make our own indie developers to do the same thing.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/193163/internal_indies.php
Cool, it was blitz game studios, yeah, wow, awesome....
http://www.gamespot.com/news/blitz-games-studios-closing-down-6414369
And... everybody's fired...
What have we learned? The high risk/reward ratio of Indie's does not balance well with the budget of a regular steady paycheck.
Or to quote contests:
Many will enter, few will win! 
That... is my commentary... comments to go with my commentary? (I could have put this in business or something like that, but then the conversation might have stayed on topic... no... the lounge is much better.)
Zach, of Zachtronics created infiniminer, which he abandoned/opensourced after people started hacking/modding. It was taken up by Notch who created minecraft.
Notch then created a second game, which he abandoned. (Though his fans [note: I said his, not the games] are trying to finish it).
Zach created a second game called Spacechem, which is on a few top iOS games lists. I haven't played either of the games, I don't really care about their gameplay (yet, as I'm still learning the basics of game dev), only their success.
I assume, that Zach has something, or knows something, or is something that lets him succeed repeatedly. And here's why: I was reviewing most mod
It's a natural assumption to assume that if you keep plugging away you will get it eventually... but in life... in constant competitions with competitors... is that likely to be the case? No, you must have the keys, whether or not you can make them yourself. Notch was given the keys (infinicraft), and took the other part from a natural counterpart (dwarven fortress), also there is a lot of procedural code in infinicraft, if anyone wants it, and it's open source.
Soooo... I don't think who has failed and why have they failed is as relevant a question as who has succeeded and why have they succeeded. In successful venture capital firms they keep the 'why' a closely guarded secrets and check, before investing, against this 'mark of success' to determine if the venture capital firms match. These firms account for many times their market share in terms of overall profits. I argue, the same is true of game development.
I believe Zach is an innovative creative craftsman. He's not perfect, from forum posts many people claim his work was inferior. (I've played his game but I can't directly compare to minecraft as I'm too cheap to pay for it and I don't particularly care anyway, user opinions give me the information I need.)
Who has succeeded, and how? No game details (other than Genre), just origin stories.
