I imagine you'd end up with something that struggles to hold together as a theme, but if you can circumvent that, MAYBE.

It's important that the non-local player-player interactions still give the player some feeling of spatial / territorial control. E.g. in the RTS game I'm drafting, you build factories around ressource points in your local town. Once you have setup an infrastructure, you can use the non-local game component to build tanks and remote control them to do reconnaissance or attacks on neighbouring territories. It's of course important that you don't completely cut down on local player-player interactions and still give the player some sort of incentive to move around. In my RTS game concept, you might find for instance certain bonuses outside of your town, which can only be claimed, if the player explicitely visits these areas.

How you realize these components in a non-RTS game concepts, is of course a different matter. But I think, that at the end of the day, it's really more a problem of balancing the different modes of interaction to achieve the gameplay you want based on the playerbase you have.

@jbadams: yeah, seems like you're right. I have a couple of ideas to drastically decrease server load however.

@spooneystone: yeah I agree! I feel like these kind of games are awesome. Thanks for the reply.

@kseh: maybe, but regular mobile games are just as grinded, if not more so. You're also forgetting that exercise helps make the game more addictive (you feel good, etc)

@ravyne: nice analysis! I agree with everything you said (except pogo gyms being fun :P) I think my approach won't rely on needing a critical mass of players, I'm aiming for a more side genre kind of game so gps is a draw, just not the main draw. Thanks for your input!

@hodgman: yeah I feel like this is the perfect time to enter. The breakthrough game hype is dying down and there's not much similar games.

@dr.penguin: fair enough, you need a
reason for people to explore. I thinking the hardest part will be finding a balance between the local and non local parts. Thanks! Hopefully your game is going well, seems like an interesting idea.

It would be cool if you hunted dinosaurs instead of pokemon. That would just be neat to look through my camera and see a velociraptor standing there.