There was a wave on indies in the '80s that would make small run of games on tapes that were sold in consignment in electronic stores in their neighborhood. The 2nd wave of indies though, the one that started in the early 2k with games like Uplink, that predates Steam or indie focused efforts such as Manifesto Games, and that got amplified with cheaper and easier to use SDK such as Torque, Flash or Unity, better media coverage and big storefronts (Steam, AppStore), this 2nd wave without a doubt is a boom that did happen.
The diversity of content available today is dramatically bigger than even 10 years ago (or, at the very least, the quantity of this diversity is - because in all era of video game history you can point at a few very strange games). The quality is variable, as it always has been and always will be, and, as the field is broad, it's not surprising that most people do not enjoy its entirety (you'll never catch me playing a RTS or a connect-3 game for instance). If anything, the broadening of the field (or the vitality of this broad field) is a sign of maturity of the medium.
Saying "oh there was a bunch of good indie games but that's been over for a while" is a bit silly when in 2013 Papers, Please was in many GOTY lists, as was Kentucky Route Zero in 2013 and in 2014 for Act III. This year, I would not be surprised to see some mentions of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture or Her Story (even if both left me a bit wanting - my indie game of the year for now is Beeswing, but no one played it so...).