Why are people getting so worked up about this?
Even if the big daddy and little sister characters were inspired from that magazine, who cares? The plot was inspired from Atlas Shrugged. It's still a fantastic game.
I'm only speaking for myself of course, but I for one love to discover video game trivia, obscure sources of certain visual designs or concepts etc. SF2's Ken's theme is a fantastic song but it's still heavily inspired by Mighty Wings from Top Gun. It's the same with the entire
Video game facts that blow your mind thread here on GAF. This whole Bioshock thing reminds me of that Italian film with the two guys dressed as plumbers which, even if it's probably unrelated to Super Mario Bros, is still a very cool find.
Honestly, that "Lighthouse" cover feels like someone made a Bioshock Infinite joke, a 90s point & click retro-demake spoof. It's not that a lighthouse, a baby and a mechanical bird are anything original or special by themselves, but combining and arranging them together in such a particular way (with addition to the baby being kidnapped through a portal) makes it all freakishly similar.
Did Levine or someone from the art team play or see this game (and the japanese mag cover) and rip them off? Maybe it's a freakish coincidence? Or some of the devs simply had these elements buried somewhere deep in memory and weren't aware they even used them? Or perhaps the japanese mag cover and the "Lighthouse" game were inspired by Bioshock Infinite in a very Arthur C. Clarkian, psychic echo through non-linear time way?
I don't know, nor do I judge, but I do very much care about this intriguing piece of trivia. Who knows, maybe a day or a few years from now, someone on the art team will mention having played Lighthouse or is a fan of the Japanese artist or the magazine, and that'll be that.