Clothing brand H&M announced Maisie Williams, who starred as Arya Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones, as Global Ambassador for the company's sustainability initiative. H&M has launched Looop Island on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Williams' first stop on the branding tour, where she revealed her favorite Animal Crossing character.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons became popular in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, not only with average gamers but with celebrities as well. Much like the rest of the world, safety procedures stopped filming for many productions, meaning actors were either out of work or put on hiatus for some time. Marvel's Brie Larson even started her own YouTube channel during this time where she showed off her Animal Crossing: New Horizons island, but it's recently been revealed that Maisie Williams is also a big fan of Nintendo's hit game.
During a gameplay interview with IGN, Williams gave a tour of H&M's Looop Island to promote the clothing brand's sustainability program. On the island created by Williams herself, the actress shows off the different ways clothing can be recycled in the game via the Looop Machine to mimic how players might go about recycling clothing in the real world via H&M's Looop. But when players visited the island via a Dodo Code, she also revealed her favorite Animal Crossing villager to be Apple, a peppy hamster villager stylized to look like an apple.
Williams also showed off the Looop Dress and Looop T-Shirt, which players can pick up when they visit H&M's dedicated island, and revealed that her favorite Animal Crossing fruit tree is apples as well, though she disdainfully started with oranges instead. During the tour, Williams explained that both the Happy Home Academy and Isabelle are breathing down her neck due to cockroaches and too many dropped items around Looop Island.
Though Looop Island is just a virtual Animal Crossing: New Horizons setting made to promote the sustainability initiative in a fun way, people can donate their clothing to H&M to help fight climate change. Williams convinced H&M to use New Horizons as a marketing tactic, knowing how many other brands such as KFC and IKEA have also created their own successful islands in-game to promote their business.
The sustainability initiative debuted a digital avatar of Maisie Williams created by Goodbye Kansas Studios, the same studio that turned Keanu Reeves into Johnny Silverhand for Cyberpunk 2077. While the avatar in Animal Crossing is, of course, more cartoonish, the digital avatar was used in a commercial announcing H&M's goal to use 100% recycled or other sustainably resourced materials by 2030.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Screen Rant