I mostly play the same games you quote, but sometimes I play some "smaller" games too ; I understand your point, but even though I don't calculate strictly the ratio price / time, I accept without blinking a 2-3 hours long game for 3-4 bucks. And there's some on the market. Good ones, even.If it is just 3-4 hours, I will youtube it. I am playing games because of the gameplay, repeated gameplay. I have hundreds of hours into Paradox 4x games, X3, Sengoku Rance (someone make a fucking SFW clone of that game! The gameplay could be 1:1 just add enough modes and stories into it.) Civilization games, XCOM, Rimworld, Stardew, Factorio, and of course thousands of hours into Minecraft.
But same game for 15 ? Forget it, or it has to be VERY good before I even consider.
I often play point&click games on Itch.io, some are 1 hour long, but some of them are very good experiences I don't regret playing, that sometimes led me to more ambitious games by the same team that I'll buy.
(last example : Chook & Sosig: Walk the Plank by Armor Games Studios)
I'd say it's all about the fun you get playing, not the lenght or the price. And it's different for everyone.
Competition should eventually lead to the sad but unavoidable death of many indies. And that's a thing we know for a long time : there's no room for everyone.So, games are given away for free, constantly bundled, day one on gamepasses that are given away for peanuts or free, launch pricing is ambitious at times (see ther Telling Lies price difference, maybe PC gaming can't bear the launch price?) and most importantly there is glut of fantastic games launching. No wonder individual sales are down. Ain't competition a wonderful thing.
As said in this article : 33 Reasons Why Indie Games Fail
And this article is 2 or 3 years old.According to GameAnalytics, 95% of indie games are not profitable, and 80% of indie games operate at a loss. That’s pretty simple math. Your indie game has a 5% chance of being profitable.
I don't know if the flooding of new games will slow down, it should because it's not sustainable, but it's the case for years now and it's still growing, so it contradicts the math and I don't know what to expect.