Game builders
It seems simple game-maker-ish tools are on the rise again. In the last few days I have seen new ones from both Microsoft and Cartoon Network. While I like that more of this make-your-own-game-experience attitude, I worry many future designers may be overly locked in to these systems, at least at an ideological level. While the simplicity offered by these tools is nice, they generally only offer a few small genres, and it can difficult to move beyond these limitations when designing the next generation. This is something that was great about D&D, because interactions didn't need to be scripted entirely, the possibility space was only as small as the imagination of the GM. I'm sure there will always be those good game designers that actually know what they are doing, but I fear the average skill level of the others may decline.