Ever since the dawn of videogaming, developers have been facing a conundrum: should they create longer experience so that players get a feeling that they have gotten their money's worth of an experience or should they create shorter games that everybody is able to finish?

During the latest years, developers seem to err on the side of shorter experiences and it seems that Splinter Cell: Conviction, the next of Sam Fischer's adventures, which is set to arrive this year, can be completed in about 12 hours by a medium player.

Maxime Beland, who is the creative director in charge of the game at Ubisoft, told the Official Xbox Magazine that “I want people to play my games and finish them. We're going to ship with difficulty levels, at least a normal mode and realistic mode - like we did on Rainbow Six Vegas. And realistic is going to be really […] hard - you're going to need stealth, two bullets is going to kill you, the enemies are going to be super-lethal.”

The 12-hour figure appears to be related to the normal mode, which has been designed so that players can enjoy the action and the story of Sam Fischer without needing to constantly be fearful of one-shot kills.

Those who are brave enough to try and play Splinter Cell: Conviction on the Realistic difficulty setting can probably expect about 30 hours of play time, mainly because of the fact that dying can become quite common. Ubisoft needs to make sure that while it increases the difficulty for more veteran players, it does not make the game too frustrating, as that can lead to a fan backlash.

The company is saying that the players who are looking to get more out of Splinter Cell: Conviction can try the new multiplayer modes, which will be engaging and provide hours of entertainment, mainly because they can face off against another human being.