Meanwhile, AAA studios can spend thousands of dollars on marketing.

I don’t really get the notion of listening to some marketing department lying through their teeth. It’s not like AAA games ever deliver on their marketing promises.

Unless an indie game goes viral, there’s very little chance that I’ll ever hear about it in order to consider buying it.

You don’t have to go dumpster diving in order to find awesome games, somebody already did. A good starting point is the top rated games list for Steam: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/

90% of them are indies and there is something for everyone on those 3 pages.