Editor's note: Seth Priebatsch, founder of mobile companies SCVNGR and LevelUp, is an expert on the way games and game mechanics are changing life in the real world.

(CNN) -- On October 20 in a small town in Louisiana, there will be a rodeo, complete with the prerequisite boots, bulls and Marlboro-man doppelgangers.

But this particular rodeo will take place not at a fairgrounds, but at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as "Angola." The riders are untrained inmates who have earned the right to participate -- and feel up to 6 seconds of freedom atop an angry bull -- in a highly calculated and wildly effective prison reward system.

Oh, we'll get back to that.

First, though, I want to acquaint you with Burl Cain. He's the Angola warden that I'm fairly convinced moonlights as a savvy game designer. In 2004 Cain was charged with giving a makeover to America's largest and bloodiest maximum-security prison, home to 5,300 violent offenders.

It was a Goliath-sized task. Angola was stained with a long history of gang violence and one particularly gruesome incident back in the 1950s when prisoners cut their Achilles tendons to protest poor lockdown treatment. Ouch. At LevelUp, the mobile payment and gaming company I founded, I thought our recent protest against the soy "cheese" in the communal office fridge got ugly.

Cain's play-by-play at Angola reads like a deck of game-mechanics cards. To change behavior, he introduced a progression system that was notched with "appointments" -- challenges inmates had to conquer to in order to get a reward. Rise to the challenge and you could earn the right to own a pet, to take a job, even the freedom to roam the grounds.

To reach the highest level, known at Angola as becoming a Trustee, can take up to 10 years. It's not an easy game, but it's one that the majority of its players are highly motivated to play.

Today, Angola is a thriving prison environment that has successfully "rehabbed" many hardened criminals into productive Trustees. Prisoners have a sense of ownership, achievement, status and some healthy envy -- not to mention an award-winning prison newspaper.

Of course, this is not a new concept. Prisons have long used incentive systems to motivate inmates. But Cain's implementation is unique. His approach has flourished because he evaluated his target audience and recognized that the traditional reward system was broken. Cain realized that his audience -- many of them men facing life or double-life sentences -- might not be motivated by standard rewards like additional phone time, longer visitation hours or upgraded quarters.

But they would be motivated by an incentive that offered them meaning -- something they could be proud of. Cain believed the opportunity to be a champion could infuse meaning and pride back into the prison experience while motivating inmates to be better men.

Which brings us back to the rodeo.

At a certain point in the climb to Trustee status, inmates earn the opportunity to participate in the Angola Rodeo, held each spring and fall in an arena that holds more than 7,500. The day consists of 11 events, including bull riding. The